Operating System

Report Commander requires Windows 2000, XP, 2003, or later. Windows NT 4.0 is not supported.

The .NET Framework must be downloaded and installed separately; see the Microsoft Web site to download it.

Crystal Reports

Crystal Reports is not required on the computer where Report Commander is run, but you will still need Crystal Reports to design your reports.

Report Compatibility and Support

Report Commander uses redistributable software components provided by Business Objects (the makers of Crystal Reports). Therefore the output from Report Commander should, in theory, be identical to the output of the same report when run in the Crystal Reports Designer.

Report Commander uses software components from Crystal Reports version XI, and generally is compatible with all previous report versions that Crystal Reports XI is capable of reading (we have tested with version 9.0 and later). However, changes to the Crystal Reports formatting engine between Crystal Reports versions may result in differences in output if your report was designed in Crystal Reports version 9 or earlier. Unfortunately these differences are outside our control.

However, there have been many changes in Crystal Reports since version 8.x to things like data type support and database driver support. While the Crystal Reports designer can generally make the necessary adjustments, the runtime components used by Report Commander often cannot. This leads to problems that manifest themselves in many different ways when using reports created with a version of Crystal Reports earlier than 9.0.

As a result, Arcana Development does not support reports created in a version of Crystal Reports earlier than 9.0. You are welcome to use Report Commander if your older reports appear to work, but we cannot provide support for any problems you encounter.