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Compatibility of CR 7 ,8.5 and 9 when used with VB application

We produced an application that bridges an ERP and a Scheduling package. When a report is required, we set a late binding call that 'looks for' a CR print engine. They tell us that verion 9 of CR does not use a 'print engine! We have never got involved in the CR side of things can you tell me what the issues are and what we have to consider if t hey are to able to use 8.5 or 9. They say they currently have CR7 to support our application and 9 to produce there new reports, bothon the same PC. CAn you shed any light on the issues?

many thanks

Will

Mike McCracken

CR9 reports will not be compatible with the CR7 engines since the file format changed.

With CR7 Crystal delivered a printing method that used the Crystal Print Engine, a dll. Crystal 9 cannot use that dll. However it does have methods of printing but your application will have to change significantly.

The CR7 display and printing dlls will not work with CR8.5 or CR9 reports. Crystal made file format changes between CR7 & 8 and more extensive changes to allow unicode with CR9. Also the licensing changed significantly between CR7 and CR9.

They can build the report in CR8.5 and save them in CR7 format but CR9 reports are not backwards compatible with previous version and cannot be saved in CR7 format.

Good luck
mlmcc

ebolek

One addition. You can open CR7 report from CR( and save it as CR9) The report will be automatically upgraded to CR9. This is a great feature because you dont need to design the older version reports when making a switch

Regards
Emre

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EwaldL

if you are using api, then this document should help you convert to rdc
http://support.businessobjects.com/communityCS/TechnicalPapers/scr8migratecrpeapitordc.pdf.asp