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Hatred

Former Member
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Just thought I'd take the time to post how much I hate Crystal, been 5 years since I worked on it and now all the memories are coming back. It's crashed Visual Studio 4 or 5 times so far today, I've lost my report once and had to restart it, fields randomly snap (or don't snap) to guidelines and it just generally behaves slightly different to every other tool I use. I'm about to go over my deadline for this part of the project which I thought would be the simplest bit....

AAAAARGH!!!!

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

former_member183750
Active Contributor
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Totally understand that there are times when we all get frustrated. Been there done that. However, these forums are probably not the best venue for venting.

I'd suggest taking a small break, collecting your thoughts and posting the actual issue. I suspect a solution is not going to be that hard. Remember to post as many details as possible, starting with the exact version of CR, .NET, OS, db, db connection type (if applicable), and details on what is happening and when. E.g.; how do I reproduce the issue?

- Ludek

Senior Support Engineer AGS Product Support, Global Support Center Canada

Former Member
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I appreciate it's not a very constructive post but sometimes you do need to vent and I think this is probably the least worst place!

Not sure there's much sense in posting the actual issues but I'll give it a go, the thing is some of these issues I remember from v8.5 so don't see them getting looked at any time soon.

For this particular project I'm using the VS2010 version of Crystal with SQL Server 2008 both on Win7, pointing a report at a view in the DB.

1. Report crashes and sometimes becomes corrupt and unusable when you change a view or db table that the report is working from. This should hopefully be relatively easy to reproduce, create a report pointing at a view, add some columns from the view, change the view (perhaps some column names and/or add columns) and try and verify the report. This is what was causing my crashes above.

2. Database columns not getting removed from the report even though they've been removed from all report areas, groups, formulas, etc. This can also cause the report/crystal/VS to crash and also cause the report to become corrupt and I've seen this since v8.5. Basically you need to use a column in a few places then try and remove it but it stays ticked in the field explorer even though it's gone from everywhere in the report. Back on v8.5 I even used to API to search a report doc for phantom columns like this and it didn't show them anywhere even though they were still ticked in the report. If you then remove this column from the DB the crash can occur, doesn't happen consistently but happened to me again above.

3. Snapping to guidelines, again should be easy to reproduce. Add a column and try and move it to the guideline that you've setup. For me it consistently didn't work until I moved the column to another section, snapped it, and moved it back. This is minor but it becomes a real PITA after a while!

4. The slightly different behaviour comment is to do with how Crystal is one of those apps that just doesn't do things in quite the standard way. Again minor but when you're in and out of 3 or 4 apps/tools dev'ing and e.g. pressing Ctrl + S to save across the board but in Crystal it closes your formula window instead of just saving it. This IS minor but I think when designing an app you need to think consistency both within the app and in relation to the apps that it's getting used alongside. Alarm bells ring for me when I see an app doing things in a non-standard way unless they're intuitive and innovative features which unfortunately in Crystal they generally aren't!


There were a couple of other small issues which I'd have to go back to that project to remind myself of, but suspect this post is already too long.

In my experience when you're working to tight deadlines (which is almost always) you want to be productive and have the app help you along the way. Little (and not so little) issues in Crystal are why I moved to other reporting tools over the years when possible and it has caused me countless hours of frustration over those years.......

former_member183750
Active Contributor
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Hello MV

Sorry. I may sound like I am being unsympathetic. Quite contrary. But without being able to reproduce the issue(s), I can not go to R&D and tell em; it's broke, fix it. No matter how well I describe the issue to them.

All of these issues are report design issues, and thus should be posted, one per post, to the SAP Crystal Reports Design Topic Space.

Personally when I get to some issues with any software, I tend to ask my self; why just me? Why am I the lucky one? I would particularly ask that for issues #1 and #2. Also, have you considered creating a phone incident in all those years? Up to some time a while back (Certainly in the days of CR 8.5), phone incidents were free. And they remain free today, with the difference that yeah, you have to shell out couple hundred $ for it initially, but if it does turn out to be a CR bug, your incident will be refunded. Promptly. And I suppose the bonus to talking to an engineer is that if they can repro the issue, it will be reported to R&D for a fix. As it is, I have no way of telling if these issue were reported to us by you. I do not believe they have been reported by anyone else though...

- Ludek

Former Member
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Fair enough, I'd be really surprised if noone else ever got 1&2, myself and people I've worked with have had these issues multiple times and often joked about losing reports! If I get a chance I'll do as you suggest and post them in the other forum.

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