I just read a notice from BO (thanks to Dave Sharpe, a former student) that they are starting a BETA program for something called Crystal Reports Viewer XI. This is really a rehashing of their “Offline Viewer” which allows users to view and print reports, but ONLY if the report is saved with data. They apparently don’t want to sell a viewer that allows refreshing because then it will take significant market share from their more expensive server products.

They also started a forum for feedback from people in the BETA program and the first comments are pretty much “it needs to be able to refresh”. The response from the BO forum moderator hints that BO is (finally) considering releasing a viewer that can refresh reports. The question is can they develop something that works as well as the ones that are already out there.