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Welcome to IWETHEY!

New TeX/LaTeX?
Build the stylesheets you want, have programs that grab from the data sources and build TeX documents, push the result out to ghostscript.

Good points: very stable, very scalable, very configurable.

Bad point: it requires some programming to set up, and requires a person with expertise to maintain.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
New Needs a point click 'n' drool component.
I need to sell this as an alternative to Crystal Reports, for good or bad.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New How about this:
Simply print from current application displaying the data to a PostScript file. Run the file through ps2pdf to get the pdf file.
Alex

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." -- last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)
New Web-based front-end?

Alternatively, gin something up in a cross-platform toolkit.

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I'm for a LaTeX or similar templetized system myself.

--\r\n
Karsten M. Self [link|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com|kmself@ix.netcom.com]\r\n
[link|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\n
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?\r\n
[link|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever.\r\n
\r\n
   Keep software free.     Oppose the CBDTPA.     Kill S.2048 dead.\r\n[link|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html]\r\n
New GUI dev for the developers too
Open source isn't going to cut it in this one. I don't have the political capital nor the buy-in in the places I would need it. This is merely damage control: not buying a complete piece of cack.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New Points against CR

These were some of the problems I ran into:

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  • It's not command-line scriptable. Not without buying an expensive product, at any rate, and even then, limited. This based on scanning docs (went through all the CR books at Staceys, an excellent tech bookstore in San Francisco), and Google, and Google Groups, and several CR developers I talked to. Best I can tell, it's an "in your face only" type of tool.
  • \r\n\r\n
  • Multi-user deployment requires multiple licenses or licenses (CALS?, CACLS?). This gets expensive, fast.
  • \r\n\r\n
  • In the process it was deployed at the last place I was at, there were some 32+ manual steps necessary to prepeare and deliver a report, occuring over the course of 40 minutes, requiring a button-presser to be there for the whole schmeer. I figure it was work that could have been substituted by a shell script or makefile similar to that I use for my resume production -- a day or so to set up and test, probably triggered automatically by a mail filter rule, held for QC review, then released.
  • \r\n\r\n
  • In the course of reviewing the issues in my first point, I kept hearing about how fundamentally limited CR is. Yes, you can get some pretty stuff output Q&D, but extending this to useful facilities was at best dificult. Definite PHB appeal, at the cost of real capabilities.
  • \r\n\r\n
--\r\n
Karsten M. Self [link|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com|kmself@ix.netcom.com]\r\n
[link|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\n
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?\r\n
[link|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever.\r\n
\r\n
   Keep software free.     Oppose the CBDTPA.     Kill S.2048 dead.\r\n[link|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html]\r\n
New Thanks, good stuff.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New My boss used it for our product's reporting capabilities
She hates the stuff!

The scriptability was so bad, she had to spend a whole hour of her presentation just guiding people through setup and configuration process. And then the whole thing fell apart. Major embarrasment.
--

One Buffalo Bill
And one Biffalo Buff
New There is one
It's by Micropress Inc. I use their OS/2 version, but it doesn't have the GUI front end... since that's the part they actually sell (that and the one that converts .tex into .html) their OS/2 version is actually distributed gratis; I figure they must have a warp bigot on the programming team or something.

Check out their Windows version; it might have enough point-click-drool appeal to make it past the phb component... and is still as fully scriptable as any other TeX system is.

[link|http://www.micropress-inc.com|http://www.micropress-inc.com]

The OS/2 and Linux versions (don't have the gui, but are free for the downloading) are at [link|http://www.micropress-inc.com/os2/|http://www.micropress-inc.com/os2/].
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
     Need alternative to Crystal Reports Enterprise - (admin) - (17)
         Define "realtime PDF". Publish-on-demand? - (kmself) - (1)
             Reports as PDF. - (admin)
         Only one I can think of is ActiveReports - (orion) - (1)
             Not quite deep enough. - (admin)
         Options depend on datasources, don't they? - (FuManChu) - (2)
             Brio is one - (admin) - (1)
                 Business Objects is another - (Meerkat)
         TeX/LaTeX? - (jake123) - (8)
             Needs a point click 'n' drool component. - (admin) - (7)
                 How about this: - (a6l6e6x)
                 Web-based front-end? - (kmself) - (4)
                     GUI dev for the developers too - (admin) - (3)
                         Points against CR - (kmself) - (2)
                             Thanks, good stuff. -NT - (admin)
                             My boss used it for our product's reporting capabilities - (Arkadiy)
                 There is one - (jake123)
         A Usenet thread asking the same question. - (Another Scott)

You can put makeup on a pig. It's still a pig.
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