Crystal Report Services question

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Does anyone knows companys who provide crystal report for custumer with better rate and better services?


Any suggestions?
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  • Hello Catherine,

     

    There are a number of companies or individuals
    out there who can provide excellent work.  But here are the
    issues.  First, they have to understand the data structure of
    your database and what it is designed to do.  They have to
    know which tables contain which data and how the tables relate to
    each other.  Secondly, in order to do this, and in order to be
    able to write and test the report, they need to have access to your
    data.  This can be done in a couple of ways.  They can be
    granted VPN access to your database where they can connect
    directly.  This will obviously require a level of trust and an
    agreement between the two parties for security purposes.  You
    can also provide a virtual connection through a remote login, such
    as a remote desktop connection.  This is not quite as handy
    for the developer, but is functional.  In that case, Crystal
    must be installed on the system they are remoting into.

     

    There would be a substantial time necessary
    for them to get in and learn your system to develop reports from
    scratch.  Now, if all you needed was a simple tweak – moving
    fields, adding a field, adding a calculation, then this would not
    be too difficult.

     

    I do speak from experience.  I have over
    13 years experience at developing Crystal Reports.  I have
    served a number of clients at the same time in my previous
    job.  I have also done some private consulting work as you
    described.  In those cases, the clients understood the time it
    would take to get familiar with their systems and were willing to
    allow for that.

     

    So, it boils down to what you are willing to
    do.  Yes, RE’s support may be costly, but they do know the
    system and don’t have that learning curve and it saves you time and
    money there.  But if you are willing to allow someone the time
    to learn your system, then there could be a potential savings
    there.

     

    I hope this little bit of advice has been of
    some help.

     

    Best regards,

    Chester

     

     

    Chester Bammel

    Business
    Analyst

    IT Enterprise
    Services

    Division of
    Information Technology

    Sam
    Houston State University

    Box
    2397 Huntsville, TX  77341

    Office - (936) 294-2351

     

     

  • Hi Chester:


    Thank you for your quick response. I would like to know how long normally you will take to learn client's system?


    Thanks!


    Catherine
  • It’s obviously ongoing and you are
    continuously learning.  But it will likely take a day to learn
    your way around. 

     

    One good way to help the process along is to
    provide other functioning reports to review.  By disassembling
    those reports and seeing how they are built, that helps the
    developer to understand the structure of the tables in a more
    practical way.  It really depends upon how complex everything
    is. 

     

    Chester

     

     

    Chester Bammel

    Business
    Analyst

    IT Enterprise
    Services

    Division of
    Information Technology

    Sam
    Houston State University

    Box
    2397 Huntsville, TX  77341

    Office - (936) 294-2351

     

     

  • Ok, I will think about it.

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