The licensing has changed in Crystal XI. I think for web-based, you need to use the Crystal Server that ships with the product. For other server-based reports, licensing varies depending on whether it's an in-house or commercial application.


>Is Crystal Reports the tool to use? If not, what can you recommend?
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>It depends on the # of users.
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>If you're using the version of Crystal that comes with VS2005 (basically, the developer edition), Crystal on the server will allow up to three users to run a report (any report) at the same time. So if three users are executing a report at the same time, and let's say the execution takes 15 seconds....any other users who try to run a report will be blocked out.
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>You can obviously put your own try....catch block in, to detect such a situation - but depending on the # of users who will be running reports simultaneously, that might be an issue.
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>Some people try to "get around" this issue by having a single CR.NET application sitting on the server. When a user wants to run a report, their selections/options are written to a custom database file, and the server app "polls" this database file for report requests, and then generates a PDF for the web user to ultimately view.
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>So bottom line, think about all your usability requirements and deployment issues.
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>In general, CR is the best general-purpose report writer today, it has more functionality than Reporting Services....but you'll need to think about these multi-user issues.
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>Hope that helps...
>Kevin