What can you do to use your existing Crystal Reports template files with i-net Crystal-Clear?
All report templates of Crystal Reports version 6.5 to 8.5 can be read natively by i‑net Crystal-Clear server and i‑net Designer. That means i‑net Crystal-Clear reads the report template and executes it at runtime.
Starting with version 9 of Crystal Reports you will have to have a version of Crystal Reports 9 (or later) installed on the same system as i‑net Crystal-Clear in order to be able to execute reports from Crystal Reports 9 and newer on the fly.
It is also possible to execute reports created with Crystal Reports 9 or later on a system without an installed Crystal Reports version (e.g. on Linux or Mac). Simply use the report reader tool (ReportReader.exe / ReportReaderNET.exe) on a system with Crystal Reports to re-write the templates in i‑net Crystal-Clear's RPT format. These templates can then be used on any system with i‑net Crystal-Clear.
If you have installed i‑net Designer on the same system as Crystal Reports 9 (or later) then you can read the report templates with i‑net Designer and save them into the i‑net Crystal-Clear report template format.
After saving the report template with i‑net Designer into a new file you can use it with i‑net Crystal-Clear on any system without having Crystal Reports installed.
As you can see, the ability to leverage your existing Crystal Reports templates together with our competitive pricing makes i-net Crystal-Clear a true alternative to Crystal Reports.
For more details, see the i-net Crystal-Clear documentation
You want to know if your old templates will be rendered correctly? You can download our i-net PDF content comparer tool and generate the differences between i‑net Crystal-Clear and Crystal Reports PDF output.
There are a few certain features of Crystal Reports templates that we are not able to access as of this point. These features either are not supported at all by i‑net Crystal-Clear or will have to be manually set after using ReportReader to re-write your template in the i‑net Crystal-Clear format.
For a comparison overview of supported features in i‑net Crystal-Clear and Crystal Reports, see the following link.
For more information and detailed technical information, have a look at the migration guide.
