Feedback Request - FastReports vs ReportBuilder?

[DBlueDev 0]

Can I ask for some thoughts and experiences between the two products, FastReports and ReportBuilder.  I have a couple of report based projects coming up and I want to make the proper choice for these projects.  I have a background with Crystal Reports over the (many) years, too expensive now plus I do not think it currently supports Delphi VCL.

 

Thank you in advance for any feedback.

[programmerdelphi2k 235]

No doubt, FastReport is a great choice VCL... and price  E299 < U$498 = single, no sources!

 

Edited July 4, 2023 by programmerdelphi2k

[Uwe Raabe 1891]

47 minutes ago, programmerdelphi2k said:

FastReport is a great choice VCL

There are some concerns about the country of origin. Some companies have strict compliance rules, while others just have a bad gut feeling.

[Attila Kovacs 617]

4 minutes ago, Uwe Raabe said:

There are some concerns about the country of origin. Some companies have strict compliance rules, while others just have a bad gut feeling.

I could not figure out the CoO, no imprint on the website. What is it? And how would others know?

 

[Uwe Raabe 1891]

In a discussion I also mentioned that it is a Virginia based company, but other powers seem to know better.

 

IMHO that is really sad, because I also like the product and find it more capable than others.

[Ian Branch 121]

In my early Delphi days I used FastReport however at that time it didn't/couldn't do what i needed so I moved to ReportBuilder.

Since then I have never seen or come across a reason to look for another report engine.

Ian 

[microtronx 35]

We have been utilizing ReportBuilder for over a decade and have never encountered any insurmountable issues.

The support provided is commendable, and we have successfully developed numerous additional features for their "RAP" - the runtime scripting engine to create functionalities for our special needs.

[Lars Fosdal 1732]

We use FastReports for simple reports, and it has been somewhat challenging due to quirky behaviours such as not liking to be used in parallell threads. 

Since we didn't need client tools for report design, but only crafted the reports in the development phase, it was chosen due to being available out of the box.

 

We also use a server version of Crystal Reports that is fed through database queue tables and driven by a standalone integration to produce labelling and documents.

[mvisser 0]

5 hours ago, microtronx said:

We have been utilizing ReportBuilder for over a decade and have never encountered any insurmountable issues.

The support provided is commendable, and we have successfully developed numerous additional features for their "RAP" - the runtime scripting engine to create functionalities for our special needs.

I totally agree. I've also been working with Report Builder for 10+ years and found it to be a very valuable product. Same experience with the support provided so I would certainly recommend.

[Frickler 8]

Until 2005 we used to use QuickReport Pro with QuickReport Designer, which was very buggy at that time. So we tried ReportBuilder Pro. It was very stable, had great documentation and lots of useful features. But it was so slow. Printing a report took more than ten times as long as with QR. Then we tried FastReport - and never looked back.

[Tom Chamberlain 45]

We have also been using ReportBuilder Enterprise for 15+ years since QuickReports was not capable of somethings we wanted to do so many years ago. 100's of reports later and that doesn't count the 'End User' reports the users have created themselves.  When COVID hit switching to emailing reports and invoice's saved so much time and paper, we have gone paperless and are not going back.  We have not had any performance issues (that were not self-inflicted) and when we have had technical issues, support is fast and responsive with patches.  I would also recommend ReportBuilder.