Hello Russell,

We are getting a little OT for this board so I will keep it brief.

The testing was done with an earlier version of FR (before it could access
native IBO components), so I was passing the result set from a TIBQuery to a
TIBOQuery and connecting to the TIBOQuery with both tools.

> Was your speed comparison measured? If so over what kind of reports and

what
are the results?
I produced a simple report using a 15 Million Recordset, the FR preview
appeared virtually instantly whilst the RB Report took a while to format, I
didn't measure the time difference but it was a few seconds, not enough to
make you change from RB to FR in itself but enough for me not to want to
change from FR to RB.

> Are FR and RB similar? Did you do a feature by feature comparison? If so

what are the results?
When I said they are similar what I meant was the design process was
similar, you could switch between either and feel at home very quickly.
As far as what you can do, most banded types allow you to produce similar
reports in my experience, there may be differences in how you have to go
about it but you can generally get the required result.

FR has the usual exporting to CSV, Text, HTML and RTF format, it also has
built in dialogues so that the end-user result set selection can be built
into the report rather than having a separate selection form.

If your clients want Cross Tab Reports FR has the components to produce them
(just improved recently), it also has a quick Table Printing component for
those simple reports.

One feature which I have not come across before in a Banded Report Generator
is the ability to align fields on multiple bands, takes the guess work out
when some fields are at the top of the page and other fields are nearer the
bottom.

I would be happy to use either tool but as Alexander usually has updates out
quicker (first with native IBO support, first with KYLIX support) I see no
reason to change.

Incidentally, although I was one of the first users of FR, Alexander has
never asked once for an upgrade fee even though the tool has improved
immeasurably over the years, I guess he must be getting enough new
registrations to keep him happy.

Steve...



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