Hi,
i'm new at Webfocus i've been using it for about 3 months now and never used Crystal Reports. i would like your opinion
on Developer Studio vs. Crystal Reports.
i appreciate your feedback.
tami

Both quite similar as far as the GUI goes. Crystal makes it a little easier to add graphics, lines, boxes and a few other niceties as far as report organization. To me there are two overwhelming differences: One is that Crystal is basically an SQL-based tool whereas WF is more. And the underlying use of the FOCUS language is far more powerful, but still allows for those used to SQL to use it. Also the scripting language (Dialogue Manager) available in WF, although not available in a GUI, extends WF's capabilities DRASTICALLY - especially with using &variables. There's a couple of cents worth--

welcome to the group Tami K!
Could you be more specific about what you need out of your reporting/BI software, or what industry you're in? That may help taylor an answer better suited to your needs.

This issue has come up for a client of mine recently as well, so I'm thinking that a write up may be of help to many folks.

I was a Crystal Reports / .NET Developer in a previous job. The difference between the two technologies is very different.

The drawbacks of Crystal...
Crystal Reports is a *fairly* static reporting system on it's own, with little olap-type functionality, unless you integrate your reports with a programming language such as .NET. Very few users will create their own reports using the crystal reports development tool, it's more of a developer-level job and reactive reporting. Business Objects, who bases their entire Business Intelligence tool off of crystal reports is a different ballgame than plain old crystal reports.

When it comes to creating reports, you have more control with crystal as far as form layout, but it takes longer to build the reports. At the summit of my career I honestly felt like I could churn out any report in Crystal in less than an hour as long as I had detailed enough specs. In webfocus, creating a report can take seconds with a stylesheet. It's an incredible feature that would benefit a Crystal developer.

Crystal is touted to be a "business intelligence" tool, but I don't see that happening on it's own. There's packages that encapsulate the reporting software that make it an actual BI tool, rather than a simple replacement for a spreadsheet, such as the Crystal Xcelsius product. We did all of our development using .NET and it took a group of four to meet the demand of a publicly-held 300 location restaurant. It took us over six weeks to build a reportcaster like ASP program that wasn't as customizable.

The advantages...
Crystal reports is better documented and more widely used than Webfocus. Doing a simple google search 3,940,000 results were given for developing in crystal reports versus only 229,000 for developing in webfocus. The majority of documentation for webfocus, I've found, is within the informationbuilders.com domain and focal point. This, in my experience, is very frustrating when I started into webfocus. Sometimes you simply don't know the term you're looking for.
Almost all Visual Basic programmers have used Crystal at some point. Again, it is integrated with Microsoft very well. Also note, many pseudo-report-developers and 'power users' are used to MS Access reporting, which acts like a sort of stripped down version of Crystal.

Crystal reports can run on any machine, does not require a server or any real configuration once you point it to your database, you're done. I've had a 10 employee logistics company client who used a postgres database on windows and crystal reports to handle all of their reporting. Their single license for Crystal Reports was around $500.

The most frustrating thing you'll find with webfocus is that the report painter is not a what-you-see-is-what-you-get developer. In crystal, you can specify a fields location down to the pixel and it has some real advantage in the desktop publishing arena. It took me, at novice level, nearly a month to build an invoice template in webfocus using the grid, and it still never ended up looking perfect.

If you think of MIS software as a toolbox, and grab the right tool for the job at hand then you're best off.

Two comments.

Darin, in 76x there is a 'GUI' for Dialogue Manager available in the Procedure Viewer. The reason I put it in quotes is because you actually need a working knowledge of DM to use it as you have to know where to put the DM statements in your code.

Jason,

Your comments are excellent, thorough, and well thought out. However, it is important to also note that WebFOCUS is a highly scalable tool that can run on a number on different platforms and manage lots of data sources and large amounts of data with native adapters vs. ODBC. We should not compare the products based on the developer tool alone.

You made a good point about the BI aspects. At this company, WF is a BI tool, not a TS tool, and the developers are business people not IT programmers.

So, Tami, enjoy!!! You are now part of a special club.

I echo Miss Ginny...
Comparing WF to Crystal is like buying a car based on the radio buttons ...
You may be real comfy if you can handle the music system without taking your eyes off the road, but what do you do when you need to kick it in to passing gear, and you've only got 4 cylinders.
Crystal is a real nice tool, but its a honda civic. Now, you've got a saturn 5 rocket. Enjoy it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: susannah,

Crystal was given for free by many platform sellers. The ownership was two years ago bought by Business Objects.
If you want to compare the functionality on all levels I agree with Susannah, it's not the proper comparison. Honda civic?? it's not even a car, I would think of a bike....(but I'm dutch, we see bikes everywhere)

Interesting someone here who was a big Crystal person and now loves WebFocus compared it to a Honda Civic and a Cadillac. The Civic might get you where you going..but you have no power to get on the Freeway...and no comfort and Style.
By the way...I travel 75 miles round trip to get to work daily...so I own a Civic..the new ones aren't the little boxes they used to be
and it gets 38 miles a gallon...so I'm not styling....but with gas prices the way they are..I'm smiling a bit...I have a spoiler on it for a little style

Comparing WebFOCUS to Crystal Reports isn't really comparing apples to apples. It's like comparing Microsoft Access to Oracle. Crystal Reports isn't the full BI solution like WebFOCUS is. To do a better comparison, compare WebFOCUS to Cognos or Business Objects. However, I doubt you'll get too many supporters of the latter 2 on this forum.

Shane

moi aussi. i had a civic all summer and loved that zippy little sucker ... but the first day i got my 6 cylinders back, was i happy.

Thank you everyone for your input on this.
I now have a better understanding.
tami

I'm in Kansas, so I'm not really sure what to say about a comparison of a civic or what a '6-cylinder' is. Now, if you want to compare Ford, Chevrolet or Dodge trucks then maybe I'd be able to keep up with the conversation.

As I stated before there's a different tool for each job. I'm never going to advise a small business to consider purchasing something like webfocus when I can build a simple ms access database to handle their reporting needs.

But then if you're a small business you could probably get a single license for Dev Studio and still use WF to take care whatever reporting needs you have with access to multiple data sources. Even small offices seldom have a single data source. You don't need the full WF-Server-available-to-the-world-via-the-internet to do WebFOCUS reporting.

excel still goes a long way!

quote:

excel still goes a long way!

Yes, all the way to the 65535th row .... and then where?

Also, you Guys ought to appreciate your very low "gas" prices. Ours is currently topping the equivalent of $2.10 a litre (note the correct spelling! ) Oh, and "petroleum" is a liquid, so how can you call it "gas"? (Yes, I know it's an abbreviation of gasoline)

Prarie, I applaud you amongst your fellow country folk on having a vehicle that does more than 12 mpg (esp. in Texas!). The sooner more people act that way the better the environment!! BTW, that "spoiler" you mention is actually a handrail for when it breaks down!

T

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tony A,

quote:

... with access to multiple data sources ...

but of course you would need to ensure that the data adapter licences required to access those data sources are in place!! Does DS come with any adapters at all?

T

quote:

Does DS come with any adapters at all?

For a DS standalone environment, you would get FOCUS, flat, and could get away with ODBC. The number of adapters in the full WebFOCUS are based on a license key for the reporting server, which in no way tells you which ones you can use just how many. There is no such key for the embedded server that comes with Dev. Studio. So if you can get to the data source with ODBC, you'll be in like Flynn.

although access comes in for some stick its actually a great solution for a small enterprise or a place with a small amount of records; i think WebFOCUS is head and shoulders above access in what you can do with it (it is a 4gl Language and not a Database after all) but would struggle to sell it to a small enterprise for whom ms access would be more than enough.

excel is a pain in that it caps at 65,000 rows but the alternatives (at the time i used it) which offered up to a million rows (the works equiv i believe don't quote me) were very unstable and i went back to struggling with Excels' row limit almost immediately...it was a no brainer- i wonder if 6 years later the competitors have sorted this.

ironically one of the things that got me initially excited about WF was the excel integration.

Actually for a standalone environment, you get access to any supported data source you want and as many as you can use. But it can only be accessed from that one box where DS is installed. There is no "adapter" licensing for DS standalone.

you know, nubi, that row limit has been increased in excel 2007 to some astronomical number .. some 'everyone needs 2gig in their desktops' kind of number...

quote:

Originally posted by susannah:
you know, nubi, that row limit has been increased in excel 2007 to some astronomical number .. some 'everyone needs 2gig in their desktops' kind of number...

thats great stuff, kind of expected but good they have sorted it-