Hi,

Someone told me that Rev Reporter would be phased out in a future release. Can someone verify this please.

Does it run now up to the latest 16 bit and 32 bit OpenInsight ? What is the lifetime of this product; is there a planned replacement or major upgrade planned ?

Peter

Rev Reporter is current on OI 32. Indeed it is 'better' - that is faster and more stable on OI v4.1x than earlier OIv3.x.

I believe in the OIv3.x (16bit) environment users had very mixed opinions of the reporting tool. For some things it does a brilliant job. I have one client who has generated volumes and volumes of beautifull reports - indeed 4 or 5 meters lineal meters and increasing - and cant understand why they would want any other kind of reporting tool. Others hate the Reporter - think its rubbish.

In the guestation period of OI32, with taking on board of OIPI, there was talk of not porting Reporter. But Australian encouragement lead to the eventual incorporation of the tool in OI32.

OK, Reporter has some potential issues - has to be last in the queue to the Oiengine, 16 in 32 bit environment etc. As alternatives OIPI is great but is not tightly integrated with OI plus we have some issues with intitialising/termination and language sets. The ODBC driver combination with Crystal Reports will be great - but there are pricing issues - Crystal is not cheap. All this says is that in the end the market determines what will be 'successful'.

Hi Richard,

] Rev Reporter is current on OI 32. Indeed it is 'better' - that is

] faster and more stable on OI v4.1x than earlier OIv3.x.

Thanks for clearing that up for me. Do you know if the problem of reporting on MV columns is fixed in the new version ? Can't exactly remember specifics, but I think it went like this. If we have an MV column called GROUPS, and with Rev Reporter we used a selection criteria (or whatever you call it, memory fades, oh yes, a query I think ) of:

GROUPS=xyz' and GROUPS not equal 'abc'  (syntax prob wrong)

it would still select rows with GROUPS=xyz' and GROUPS=abc'. My thinking on why it did that is because it (RR) had already selected the row, a match in fact, on the first criteria (GROUPS=xyz' ). It was rather annoying, and we never could get it to exclude the rows we didn't want.

] I believe in the OIv3.x (16bit) environment users had very mixed

] opinions of the reporting tool.

Yes, even though the problem with the MV fields and a few other minor things, it suited purposes quite well. I supplemented the reporting with OIPI.

] In the guestation period of OI32, with taking on board of OIPI,

] there was talk of not porting Reporter. But Australian encouragement

] lead to the eventual incorporation of the tool in OI32.

Okay, sounds like the person who told me RR was to be phased out had the old news, and didn't know of the 'down under' influence (that's where I live, boy it was hot today, hottest day in over 60 years).

] OK, Reporter has some potential issues - has to be last in the queue

] to the Oiengine, 16 in 32 bit environment etc.

No doubt a developer could control that, I assume, but an end user couldn't ??

] As alternatives OIPI is great but is not tightly integrated with OI

] plus we have some issues with intitialising/termination and language

] sets.

I didn't have much trouble with OIPI, but do admit I haven't used it for years, so these problems must be new.

] The ODBC driver combination with Crystal Reports will be great - but

] there are pricing issues - Crystal is not cheap. All this says is

] that in the end the market determines what will be 'successful'.

So Crystal is quite pricey. Any other reporting options, not so pricey, but where you can distribute a runtime reporter where the user can 'roll their own', no royalties ? I wonder if there is a trial version of the ODBC driver, possibly not.

Thanks,

Peter

Crystal is made more expensive by the fact that the standard edition only supports Microsoft products so users of other database products need to use the next version up. This retails in Europe for 500€ as opposed to 200€ for the standard edition.

The Sprezzatura Group

World Leaders in all things RevSoft

A reporter with a runtime where users can roll their own at no extra cost actually sounds like a "free report writer" and are likely to be worth what you pay for them. That being said reporters may exist where users can control a limited set of parameters in distributed reports. Web searches reveal products such as http://www.infois.com/tools/reportwriter/products/, http://www.hallogram.com/foxfire/ (possibly, http://www.dnjonline.com/articles/tools/iss15_tools4.html etc. Find more by typing "royalty free report tools odbc" at Google.

Regards

The Sprezzatura Group

World Leaders in all things RevSoft

I want to be careful that I havnt given you the wrong impression, so will re-iterate my comments. In the lead up to OI32 some said that Reporter was dead in the water. But by request, it got a reprieve and was sucessfully reworked to accompany OI32 - indeed in the new environment, in many situations it is actually is quite satisfying to use. If the market likes Reporter it will continue for a while yet - you never know… ( er, by the way if you want Report lan packs I could do you a good deal )

But, if you dont mind rolling your sleaves up and doing some coding, OIPI is at least as good and many would say a lot better (but in the vanilla, doesnt lend itself to user 'roll your own').

Now when you talk about runtime and user roll-your-own then we have a different scene. Reporter is available at moderate cost, but with acknowledged issues (and still is 16bit). Sprez's extension of OIPI is a good candidate for list reports but the holy grail is Crystal - involving a moderate investment in ODBC and then Crystal itself.

As Sprez have said, you gets what you pays for. If the situation requires the features of Crystal then thats what they must pay.

Richard,

Thanks, that gives me a better background of what happened with Rev Reporter, also there are some deployment and runtime, etc issues to look at. Ideally, if the person trying to decide between RR and the ODBC details what he sees as RR problems and what extra he wants to do (he is always raving about Excel pivit tables, so he obviously likes them). Also what the company want to do; one user designing/changing reports and the rest only running reports, etc, etc.

It would be good if the user could see a demo of the new Rev Reporter and the ODBC in operation. (Even possibly an ODBC/Crystal demo, but that is asking a bit much). He lives in Adelaide (Australia), but possibly he could get to Sydney if RevSoft Australia would be interested in a demo.

Thanks,

Peter

Hi,

Thanks for the information on "royalty free report tools odbc", etc. The only downside to finding such a tool (some have source code as well), even though there may be no royalties for distributing, is that for every distribution/deployemtn to the end user=1 RevSoft ODBC driver ($$$).

Unless RevSoft would consider a royalty free LH ODBC driver, but that would be very pricey, I'd guess.

Peter

HAVE YOU USED THE ODBC DRIVER YET WE ARE HAVING DIFFICULTY.

THE DICTIONARY SEEMS TO BE THE RPOBLEM.

MS and teamed up with the Crystal people as one of last years road shows to demo the power and flexability of Crystal. (The theme promoted by MS was Open Systems/inter-connecting systems and the technology they were developing (the MS way). Crystal very impressive.

I dare say that this year David Goddard will be doing OI roadshow in Sydney and the ODBC + reporting using Excel/Crystal will be one of the highlights (if not overshaddowed by other more exciting stuff)

Richard Bright

BrightIdeas New Zealand

Hi Dave,

]] HAVE YOU USED THE ODBC DRIVER YET WE ARE HAVING DIFFICULTY. THE DICTIONARY SEEMS TO BE THE RPOBLEM ]]

No, we have not used the ODBC driver as yet. Thanks for advsing about the problem with dictionary. What reporting tool are you using ? Crystal, Excel, Access ? What particular problem are you having with the dictionary ?

Peter

The idea of the roadshow is well and good. But for those of us who have

ERP products this concept is long overdue and needed now. Any good documentation or direct assistance with the ODBC driver would be greatly appreciated.

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