Post Author: jfrankman
CA Forum: JAVA
We have a report that needs to include various personal signature depending upon who is using the application. We therefore need to specify which signature image should be included in the report at runtime. We have been using Crystal Reports for Eclipse for our development. I searched and found about 6 posts asking how this can be done in the CR4E forums. There was not any official response Business Objects on any of them. Nor did anyone have a solution. I was able to find some documentation that this sort of thing can be done with the Report Applicaiton Server: http://www.insight.businessobjects.com/node/3061 but this requires that you purchase and deploy the Report Application Server.
It looks as though this sort of thing is impossible using CR4E. In my opinion this is a very basic requirement that Business Objects should address. At least admit that CR4E can't do this rather than leave everyone in the dark. This terrible lack of support as well as all the inactivity in these forums (four weeks since the lastest forum topic) leads me to conclude that Business Objects is not a viable contender for producing reports using a Java environment. It appears that I have wasted my time over the past year trying to use crystal reports for my reporting componenent in my JEE web application. I have kept it strung along under the impression that improvements and fixes would be forthcoming. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
I am posting this message for others who may be investigating Crystal Reports for their JEE solutions. The report designer in CR4E is nice, which was why we chose to go with Crystal Reports instead of BIRT. However, if you examine the API that comes with CR4E you have little runtime programmatic control over your reports. As stated above even images within the report are hard-coded and cannot be changed at runtime. As such I am leaving this message as a warning for future investigators.
Since I have invested quit a bit into getting Crystal Reports to work in my applicaiton, I am going to see if I get any response, from Business Objects concerning my problem. But for anyone starting out I suggest they use something besides CR4E. Based upon my experience of developing using Crystal reports and monitoring the forums, I can only conclude that Business Objects is not very serious about the CR4E product and will be forced to use BIRT or Jasper. CR4E is nothing more than bait and switch tactic to try to get you to purchase Report Application Server.
If anyone has had better luck with CR4E, I am interested in hearing from you.. But my experience thus far with Crystal Reports and CR4E has been dissappointing.