I know this question is virtually impossible to answer, but I'd appreciate insights.

I'm contemplating incorporating Crystal Reports into an app. My primary reason for doing this is it's multiple detail band feature (which I've seen in no other reporting tool).

Never having used crystal reports, I'm trying to budget how much time I should set aside to get these reports working, and integrated into my app and my update routines. What is people's experience? Am I looking at days or weeks or months? How much added time does the multiple detail band feature add, or is it relatively straightforward?

The multiple detail band is critical. You can do it with the VFP report writer, but maintenance of such reports borders on impossible. I'm currently generating the report programmatically in HTML, which works great, but is very slow to create and to print. I need to print it through Word since the native web control ignores page layout tags, and blows up entirely for large documents (i.e. 250 pages and more).

Also, how would people rate Crystal's speed?

Thanks,

David