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http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/18685 http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/18686 http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/18687 http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel/forum/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=256&day=2008-3-18 http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel/forum/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=257&day=2008-3-18

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http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/18669 http://www.haystack.mit.edu/edu/undergrad/srt/forum/calendar.php?s=&action=getinfo&eventid=1 http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=31&day=2000-3-15 https://www.naropa.edu/forum/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=2&day=2008-3-15

Let's think of all the things we can that have gotten cheaper over the same period, yet perform the same or better than in the 1980s.
- Your PC - by performance numbers alone, it should cost $50M each.
- Hard disks - i have a 10M Seagate that cost me almost $500, today you get a 1GB USB drive for $20.
- Gasoline - Everyone thinks gas is higher, it isn't if you do the math.
- VHS movies were $79, they are now $5 in the bargain bin. DVDs too.
- High quality audio equipment - you had to spend $10,000 back then to reach the sound quality of a $200 system today
- FM Radio is still free, but FM radios are given away as company schwag - Thanks Business Objects http://www.businessobjects.com/ and Sun http://www.sun.com/!
- DVD players were $500 (I have a Toshiba) and now they are $30 http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_ id=5270015
- T-shirts are still $9-15
- Items that have been outsourced for production are 30%-90% cheaper.
- I'm sorry that you want a raise, RIAA, I'd like a raise too, but haven't had one since 2001.

Ok, so this means that CDs should now cost $1 since manufacturing has been completely outsourced and costs have dropped at least 16x over this same period. Get over it RIAA and wake up to competition. You are confused as to which business you are in. You think you are in the art business, when you are in the magazine business.

Microsoft owns crystal reports.

No, they don't. It's owned by a French company called Business Objects. Microsoft just licensed a stripped down version of CR for VB6.

I work for Business Objects. In fact, I am the Product Manager for our new Crystal Reports for Eclipse offering. I attend a number of conferences with my job and often get asked this very question..."Why should I use your product over an Open Source Solution?" Open Source is free after all...isn't it? Well, in my mind it depends on what you mean by free. If you have the resources internally to committ your Developer resources to modify an open source project should it require it, then you may perceive this as being free. Based on my experience with Developer salaries it would not take long for a company to justify a $500 (or $700 as you quote) to by a fully supported and indemnified reporting solution. If your company's core competence is not in reporting then you really need to evaluate how much effort you want to put into modifying a reporting solution to fit your needs.

On top of this, a number of companies have a business model based purely on supporting and indemnifying open source software. Let's take BIRT for example, if you want to deliver it in a solution that requires indemnification or if you require any formal support at all, you can expect to pay Actuate from $995 (plus $95 for cost of Designer) to $6995 http://www.actuate.com/products/techzone/birtrepor ting/birt_pricing/networkbasic.asp/ [actuate.com]. Business Objects includes indemnification and support in all of their products, which puts us at about half the cost of Actuate's lowest offering.

On top of this, users need to answer these questions when choosing their reporting solution:

• Do I need to support .NET and Java applications?
• Will I potentially need to expand my solution?
• Do I need support and indemnification?
• Can I dedicate Developer time and effort to fixing and maintaining your modified oss code?

So based on how you answer these questions an organization should be able to determine what is the best solution for them. Currently, we are the only reporting solution natively supported in both .NET and Java, which plays a large part in why we are the #1 reporting solution used by Developers.

If there may be a possibility that your solution may grow to require more "enterprise-level" features (e.g. fault-tolerance, scheduling, load-balancing and security) then you need to consider how well your current solution will grow. Ofcourse Pentaho claims to support BIRT, however Pentaho is largely unproven right now and still has a business model around providing support for the servers which starts at $1000.

Don't get me wrong. I love open source, I personally use a number of open source solutions, and of course Crystal Reports for Eclipse (http://www.businessobjects.com/eclipse/ [businessobjects.com]) is built on the Eclipse Platform. I am just trying to convey that Developers really have to assess their current needs and situations before choosing any reporting solution (open source or not). The misconception that open source solutions are free often ends up costing an organization a lot more in the long run because they never took the time to do an initial assessment of what they actually expect from the product. A lot of companies are making a lot of money off of providing support and solutions for open source software. There is a reason for this, and I think it's very important to include these "potential" costs whenever choosing a solution.

As for reporting technologies specifically, Crystal Reports has been providing solutions for Developers for over 13 years. We have a proven reporting solution rich with

I posted this earlier unintentionally under anonymous. It was more that I was not paying as close attention as I should have been than an act of cowardice as the name suggests. Anyways, I logged in this time and decided to post it top level: I work for Business Objects. In fact, I am the Product Manager for our new Crystal Reports for Eclipse offering. I attend a number of conferences with my job and often get asked this very question..."Why should I use your product over an Open Source Solution?" Open Source is free after all...isn't it? Well, in my mind it depends on what you mean by free. If you have the resources internally to committ your Developer resources to modify an open source project should it require it, then you may perceive this as being free. Based on my experience with Developer salaries it would not take long for a company to justify a $500 (or $700 as you quote) to by a fully supported and indemnified reporting solution. If your company's core competence is not in reporting then you really need to evaluate how much effort you want to put into modifying a reporting solution to fit your needs. On top of this, a number of companies have a business model based purely on supporting and indemnifying open source software. Let's take BIRT for example, if you want to deliver it in a solution that requires indemnification or if you require any formal support at all, you can expect to pay Actuate from $995 (plus $95 for cost of Designer) to $6995 http://www.actuate.com/products/techzone/birtrepor ting/birt_pricing/networkbasic.asp/ [actuate.com]. Business Objects includes indemnification and support in all of their products, which puts us at about half the cost of Actuate's lowest offering. On top of this, users need to answer these questions when choosing their reporting solution: * Do I need to support .NET and Java applications? * Will I potentially need to expand my solution? * Do I need support and indemnification? * Can I dedicate Developer time and effort to fixing and maintaining my modified oss code? So based on how you answer these questions an organization should be able to determine what is the best solution for them. Currently, we are the only reporting solution natively supported in both .NET and Java, which plays a large part in why we are the #1 reporting solution used by Developers. If there may be a possibility that your solution may grow to require more "enterprise-level" features (e.g. fault-tolerance, scheduling, load-balancing and security) then you need to consider how well your current solution will grow. Ofcourse Pentaho claims to support BIRT, however Pentaho is largely unproven right now and still has a business model around providing support for the servers which starts at $1000. Don't get me wrong. I love open source, I personally use a number of open source solutions, and of course Crystal Reports for Eclipse (http://www.businessobjects.com/eclipse/ [businessobjects.com]) is built on the Eclipse Platform. I am just trying to convey that Developers really have to assess their current needs and situations before choosing any reporting solution (open source or not). The misconception that open source solutions are free often ends up costing an organization a lot more in the long run because they never took the time to do an initial assessment of what they actually expect from the product. A lot of companies are making a lot of money off of providing support and solutions for open source software. There is a reason for this, and I think it's very important to include these "potential" costs whenever choosing a solution. As for reporting technologies specifically, Crystal Reports has been providing solutions for Developers for over 13 years. We have a proven reporting solution rich with features that I can confidently say no open source solution matches up with. Sure, there will be features t

• Do I need to support .NET and Java applications?
• Will I potentially need to expand my solution?
• Do I need support and indemnification?
• Can I dedicate Developer time and effort to fixing and maintaining your modified oss code?

So based on how you answer these questions an organization should be able to determine what is the best solution for them. Currently, we are the only reporting solution natively supported in both .NET and Java, which plays a large part in why we are the #1 reporting solution used by Developers.

If there may be a possibility that your solution may grow to require more "enterprise-level" features (e.g. fault-tolerance, scheduling, load-balancing and security) then you need to consider how well your current solution will grow. Ofcourse Pentaho claims to support BIRT, however Pentaho is largely unproven right now and still has a business model around providing support for the servers which starts at $1000.

Don't get me wrong. I love open source, I personally use a number of open source solutions, and of course Crystal Reports for Eclipse (http://www.businessobjects.com/eclipse/) is built on the Eclipse Platform. I am just trying to convey that Developers really have to assess their current needs and situations before choosing any reporting solution (open source or not). The misconception that open source solutions are free often ends up costing an organization a lot more in the long run because they never took the time to do an initial assessment of what they actually expect from the product. A lot of companies are making a lot of money off of providing support and solutions for open source software. There is a reason for this, and I think it's very important to include these "potential" costs whenever choosing a solution.

As for reporting technologies specifically, Crystal Reports has been providing solutions for Developers for over 13 years. We have a proven reporting solution rich with features that I can confidently say no open source solution matches up with. Sure, there will be features that both Crystal and an open source reporting solution will have in common, but if you look at a complete feature matrix, as well as the customer references attesting t

FYI. Business Objects is hiring developers to work in their Yaletown office.

http://businessobjects.com/company/careers/job_ope nings_canada.asp

Anyone else got any leads?

What technology was being used for this and what kinds of errors? One of our hopes for using Business Universes or Data Models is that they can be used to shield users from common mistakes that would lead to incorrect reports.

For example, one common problem we run into is aggregation of quantities in hierarchical one-to-many relationships, AKA fan traps. Essentially, when you have table A -= table B -= table C (where '-=' represents a one-to-many relationship) and you need to be able to sum on a measure in table B and see fields in table C, you will end up getting incorrect sums. This is due to the fact that the measure from B is repeated for each related row in C, which throws off the sum. Business Universes can (supposedly) prevent users from getting themselves into trouble with fan traps if you set them up properly.

One of the most exciting features in SQL Server 2005 for me is the new Report Builder. SQL Server 2005 includes a new ClickOnce WinForms app called Report Builder that allows end-users to design their own reports from a business-user friendly data model. It is very similar to Business Object's WebIntelligence for those of you familiar with that product, but with an apparently more affordable licensing arrangement.

Essentially, the data architect takes the OLTP or data warehouse and abstracts it via metadata into Business entities with which end users are familiar. In Business Objects, this semantic layer is called a Business Universe and in SQLServer Reporting Services it's called the Data Model. Because this semantic layer understands how the data should be put together, it writes the underlying SQL necessary to give the user the answer they want. In principle and demos, it is very slick. We'll soon see how the two stack up in reality at my place of business, as we're setting up both this week to play with.

Try explaining that to the numerous companies in and around Canada's "Tech Triangle" (which happens to include Waterloo, Ontario, the home of the supposedly famous University of Waterloo's CS program). I went to Conestoga College, which has a very good, very relevent Computer Programmer/Analyst course. While it's a programming course and gives you a very good basis, it also relates it to the business aspect of the world. I came out knowing how to program complete systems end-to-end regardless of the language, and can pick up most languages fairly quickly. Even the evil RPG . And I've had extreme difficulties getting a programming position outside of insurance companies.

The one incident that really burned me was at a job fair. I walked up to a booth for Business Objects, a company that creates add-on tools for other software. From what I saw, they used VB. I thought to myself, "I think I could do really well here". So I went up to the guy. The *FIRST THING* he asks..."Where did you go to school?" I say "Conestoga College" proudly. He says "Sorry, we don't take college students. University only." I spent the next 5 minutes pointing out all the experience I had creating software relevent to his company. He simply dismissed it. There are many other examples of the bias towards university students, but that was the one that pissed me off the most. Most companies, even software companies, have the idea the if you went to university, them you simply *MUST* be better then a lowly college grad.

Some might quibble that report writing isn't programming, but there's generally SQL and scripting involved in the more complex queries, and having to deal with end users, who not only don't know what they want, but don't understand it when they get it, is the really bad part of any programmer-user experience.

That's what Business Objects is designed to do. Of course, you can also just use your favorite server-side scripting language and do it yourself. Or, if you're using Oracle, you can just fire up Oracle Reporter or Oracle Forms. There are tons and tons of tools to do this.

Most commercial vendors of business intelligence solutions, e.g. Cognos and Business Objects, have a web solution for building custom reports.

Crystal Reports can be integrated into your application itself as well and features a killer report designer and query builder interface and great printed reports. Crystal Reports can publish report datastraight to the web as well. For more information, check out Seagate's web site.

Business Objects is very popular for its interactive report functionality, where you can drill down into your query getting different levels of information. It helps you avoid information overload in large reports and is generally the tool of choice for doing crossreporting on related queries. For more information, check out Business Object's web site.

-Pat