Hi bob,

>Quitely frankly, the VFP report writer, while certainly irritating at times, serves our needs. I have never found anything that I wanted to do that couldn't be done with the VFP report writer. Sure, most of the data has to be "preprocessed", but it would appear that the Crystal solution is no different (at least in the VFP environment i.e. the need to copy tables to FOX2X format or be forced into ODBC hell).

>The limitations of graph are the main reason we are looking at Crystal. I am interested in be able to provide powerful charting capabilities into my app, and MSGraph doesn't cut it. Can you tell me whether you have used the charting tools available in Crystal and if they are cumbersome to use?

The charting capabilities in Crystal Reports are sufficient to fill my needs. I don't use MS graph so I can't give you a fair comparison, but CR is pretty advanced. Maybe you could tell me what capabilities you want. Maybe I can answer them for you.

>Also, my biggest concern with Crystal is installing the components. It is not acceptable to me to force my users to reinstall my application every time I add a new feature. Instead, I have an "updater" program which installs the necessary dlls/controls. While it may be true that I have to spend a little extra time finding and creating the necessary registry entries, it prevents the user from having to reinstall the application. What can you tell me about your experience programatically installing Cyrstal controls (I am not interested in installshield/wise, etc...I need to install them programatically).

When using the RDC or CPRE approach you only need to install some (or better a bunch) of DLLS and register one or two. Personally I've made a Client-setup (normal VFP setup for each workstation) with all the needed DLLS and the VFP run-time libraries. They have to be installed only ones. Whenever you install additional applications (or upgrades) you won't need the DLLs for crystal etc. You can install them directly on the server and each workstation can start just after you've installed them.

Walter,