Crystal Reports Designer 9

[Former Member]

Hi,

We have reports developed in Crystal Reports Designer version 9 which is no longer supported. What are our easiest and cheapest options to ensure that these reports will continue to run ? We do not need to edit these report, just to continue to run them.

Thank you.

[former_member183750]

If you do not need to edit the reports, the easiest way to run these would be through the CR Viewer:

SAP Crystal Reports Viewer | Crystal Solutions| Business Intelligence | SME | SAP

Note that the viewer will only be able to run saved data reports. E.g.; no refresh, no connection to new data sources. If you need refresh capabilities, you will have to upgrade to CR 2013. A 30 day eval can be downloaded from here:

SME Free Trials | SME Software | SAP

Sales can be contacted here:

866-681-3435 or 1-800-677-7271

Worldwide Office Locations | SAP

- Ludek

Senior Support Engineer AGS Product Support, Global Support Center Canada

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[Former Member]

Yes, we need refresh capabilities, just that we don't need to redesign them (they are considered legacy reports). The company does not want to invest in any other Crystal related products, they are terrified of this idea. I was trying to find out if there is still a reasonable priced solution so we can continue to run these reports without fear that one day they will not work anymore due to some Windows patch or some other product upgrade.

[former_member183750]

Tough. Any solution that requires a refresh will need some $ investment - be it an actual designer or a 3rd party viewer.

And the issue is not just OS patches. Other things to consider:

CR 9 does not support any of the "modern" Operating Systems (e.g.; WIN 8, Win 7, Win 2012). And as you presumably update your databases CR 9 will eventually not be able to report off of those. E.g.; say the report was using some version of MS SQL, you update that to MS SQL 2012, more than likely, the report will stop working.

Possibly the better question is why the powers that be are so terrified of updating. I suspect we could help and the help on these forums is free. And there is tons of documentation on how to, what to, etc., etc.

- Ludek

[Former Member]

That is correct, db updates are among those "product upgrades" I mentioned in the above post.

We have an Oracle db and we are on 11g now.

The idea of a CR upgrade is not so appealing not due to technical aspects at all but due to the assumption that it will involve significant costs. We have other tools for developing new reports if needed so we really use Crystal Reports now for the legacy reports.