I guess I tend to use SQL Server, so this is less of an issue for me. Also, Randy McAtee wrote a great addon for VFE to use Crystal, and it creates an ADO record set and sends that to the report. That seems like a better way to do it than exporting to fox26 tables.

You report tool sounds interesting. I wish you good luck with it.

I also remember a product called Bull's Eye reports. Any relation? It never seemed to get off the ground, but was supposed to be fully oop. I think it actually used an FRX in the background.

BOb


>> I don't understand why some people would rather strugle and kludge with the VFP report writer.
>> Those people say 'I shouldn't HAVE to pay for a third party product, VFP is a database ap,
>> and reports are important part.' Well, I agree with that, but I also HATE reports and
>> would rather use one that supports multi-line detail bands, sub-reports, report chainging,
>> OOP access to the report form, etc, than fight with the VFP report tool. When the VFP rw is
>> up to par with VFP, I will re-evaluate my decision.
>
>Bob,
>
>I think a lot of the reasons that VFP people like myself don't like the fact that I can't use VFP Cursors directly with Crystal Reports. I personally own 3 versions of Crystal Reports Developer Edition 5, 7 and 8. I never shipped a single copy of my apps with Crystal. I never used 5.0 and 7.0 because of crashes and BUGS. Yes they would eventually ship fixes. Then I bought 8 and they still didn't support native VFP tables without exporting to FOX2X tables and I didn't want to have to add ODBC support to my software for installation in a self install due to support headaches and added overhead to distributions from downloads.
>
>So that is why I wrote my Report Engine and OCX controls. I could have done it in Pure VFP but there are speed advantages to using low-level compiled apps like Delphi in loops, etc. Plus, there are Technical Limitations to using VFP as a Report Preview since there is now WM_PAINT messages that can be captured when painting to a VFP Form using the GDI API.
>
>However, now that I have an OCX that is basically a Page Painting tool with the included methods you can do just about anything you want with it as far as painting your own multiple detail bands, sub-reports etc. It already supports Report Chaining but with the ability to support different Page Sizes and/or Orientations all withing a Single Report Preview. And it's very OOPy. And Watermarks are a breeze! Not that we all do Watermarks.
>
>And I HATE making Reports TOO!!! I do however love writing the Low-Level stuff that makes people say WOW!!!