Crystal Reports Version to Work With Vb 6 and VS 2008

[Former Member]

Hi,

We have some legacy VB 6 applications which are too large to port over to Visual Studio which use Crystal 7.0

Recently at one site there have been problems with another application which uses a new version of Crystal. Either one or the other will work but not both. This might be solved by ugrading to Crystal XI R2 ( I believe that newer versions can run side by side). However, we also have new projects starting that are to be developed in VS 2008. As I understand it, Crystal XI R2 will not work with VS 2008 and CR 2008 will not work with VB 6.

We really donlt want to have to buy both versions !!

Anyone got any ideas ?

Many Thanks

Paul

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Paul,

the Crystal Reports Developer Suite came in the past with several developer SDKs:

You could develop for MS COM components in VB and C++ (win and web).

You could develop in Java with the JRC (web development only - JSP)

You could develop in .NET with the CR .NET classes (win and web).

Please see a full list of SDKs [here|http://devlibrary.businessobjects.com/BusinessObjectsXIR2/en/devsuite.htm].

Since CR 2008 the COM SDK are phased out as this is deprecated technology and not part of the product any more.

CR 2008 you can only develop in .NET and Java.

to make it short:

Crystal XI R2 will work with VB 6 and C++ in COM.

Crystal XI R2 and Crystal 2008 will work with VS 2008 in .NET.

Crystal 2008 will not work in VB or C++ as the COM technology is deprecated and not part of this product any more.

Please see [here|https://boc.sdn.sap.com/developer/library] for a full online developer help for all CR 2008 SDKs.

Please see [here|https://boc.sdn.sap.com/] for samples of the above and general documentation.

Falk

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply Falk, some useful links there.

However, from other posts I have read elsewhere, I was under the impression the Crystal XI R2 does not integrate with VS 2008, although it does with 2005. I guess I will download a trial version and try it out in VS 2008. If it doesn't work, then it looks like we have a few options :

1. go back to VS 2005

2. make do with the version that comes bundled with 2008

3. Get X1 R2 for the legacy apps and CR 2008 for the VS projects.

4. Ditch CR completely fro the VS 2008 apps and look at something like SSRS

Not sure which way we are going to go at this point !

And Don, thanks for the comments. I have tried installing all Crystal files in the application directory and unfortunatley it didn't do the trick. It's an old app anyway, and about time it got upgraded, so probalby going to go to XI R2.

Cheers

Paul

[ted_ueda · Accepted solution]

CR XI Release 2 will not integrate with VS 2008.

Only versions of CR that integrate with VS 2008 at this time is CR Basic for VS 2008 (the embedded version, 10.5) and CR 2008 with Service Pack 0 (12.x).

Sincerely,

Ted Ueda

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

OK thanks, that's what I thought.

Some decisions to be made !

[former_member11696]

CR 7 did not support side-by-side installs. Likely what is happening is the your app and the other app is loading crpe32.dll from the \windows\system32 folder. Which obviously will not support each other. This is the only dll that is common among all versions of CR, see below for more info, and that due to it's location can cause issues like this. Newer versions from 8.5 do version checking and athough the dll's have the same name XI R2 will not load other versions, there are exceptions. The exceptions are UFL and some legacy database drivers that will work in any and all versions.

A few possible work arounds, in your app do version checking when loading crpe32.dll or specifically if crpe32 is residing in a memory space that some other app has loaded it and Windows will share, check the version of the dll and if in your case it's not 11.5.x.x. then pop up a message indicating they must close the other Crystal app before continuing.

Move all the runtime files into the applications startup folder, what's specified in the Icon on the your desktop or short cut. Moving them there may fix this, we start looking for our runtime where your EXE is located and then in the working Folder, then in the \system32 folder and finally down the PATH statement. We also have hard coded specific location in our load methods. In this case you may have to rename the \windows\crystal folder from the CR 7 install. But I don't recall if this will break the CR 7 app.

Also if you are moving the version 7 runtime or the other app it may break that application so make note what you did so you can restore it. Also highly suggested to back up everything and test this on a test machine before applying to the production PC's.

You can use tools like Filemon and modules from our site. You can get filemon from www.sysinternals.com.

Other than that it will not likely work due to 7 not supporting side-by-side and will load anything it finds. And of course, Don't support or install both versions of software on the same PC.