>however, as far I can see, .NET - Crystal Reports- is a lot slower for reports than the VFP report writer is.
>There has to be a better way, and I just havent found it.
>
>In the beginning, because of the learning curve, that's true, and likely to be true for many tools.
>
>However, the development process and performance with .NET/CR can be just as good as with the VFP report writer - not to mention that CR is a more robust and more full-featured report writer than what Fox has (and that's nothing against Fox, the VFP RW is a good one....CR is simply better)


You naturally might not be aware of it yet, but VFP Report Writer is no longer only way to write reports in FoxPro.

To me personally, entire FoxPro right now is one giant OOP Report writing tool/language.
You can write reports as forms (scx) using native foxpro objects, you can create new reporting objects, build reporting classes/libs just as we did with interface back in 90ies. You can write reports in code from scratch, drive reports from text files, from memo fields, even from command window. Reports themselves can be objects and so for.

Now give it few more years, and combine all this with FoxPro known datahandling / connectivity powers and you might enjoy epiphany
of how inferior really is / will be VFP9 reporting when compared to NET/CR reporting.

Cheers :)