Microsoft's designs on Adobe's turf

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Next Version of VS will not have Crystal Reports - unless

I was informed by Microsoft that Vista Studio will not include Crystal Reports. In fact I was informed that officially Microsoft considers Business Objects - the company that now owns Crystal reports - to be its arch enemy.

Microsoft representatives have always been honest with me when a question is posed. The blunt answers are sometimes exactly what I do not want vocalized and I took this answer as a cry out against wrong doing by those at Microsoft who want it to be managed ligitimately and those at Microsoft who see business as war. War is a function only of government. We must not tolerate businesses making war. From my perspective Microsoft is required to support Crystal Reports - even though they want us to use a new Report Writer, because of two or more decades of that support in the past.

Later I discovered that the upgrade to E-porfolio, a product that works with Crystal Reports, would not include excel spread sheet exports. This could be related to the patent issue Microsoft has with exports from Access. Or its blatant war.

What I am proposing is that you Grind that Ax on your Microsoft representative. Visual Studio has always had support for Crystal and should continue to have support for Crystal. Microsoft is rich enough to pay Business Objects for that or give Business Objects the ability to plug Crystal Reports into VS 2007.

We all have come to expect certain things from our Microsoft supported tools. I personally am responsible for over 200 Crystal Reports at my shops and as great as what comes bundled in SQL Server 2005 for Report Writing might be do not consider it good use of time to convert those. Plus many of the reports use data from Oracle and even MySQL now.

Crystal Reports just isn't going to be replaced any more than Oracle or Java. What will get replaced is VS, unless a better course is taken.

The Eclipes based tools - from IBM and others - I think Oracle and even perhaps Sun, represent a way for developers to continue supporting existing applications - which owing to the Novell/Microsoft marriage and virtualization, have a lot longer life span than I ever imagined.

I sence that many at Microsoft want to be good. Top management may even want to be good. But Top managment is not capable of seeing how to do that. They want customers like us to vocalize, show them the way. SHOW ME THE GOOD

On the most positive of notes, a new directorfor the Washington Software Association, originally from IBM, has replaced the overly Microsoft oriented woman who use to be in charge. There is good being shown.

Frank L. Mighetto CCP

Posted by: mighetto   Posted on: 12/04/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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