I was recently asked to do a project converting some Crystal Reports to iNet Clear Reports.  The customer assured me that the Clear Reports designer was very similar to Crystal Reports, and he was correct.  During the project I had no trouble finding my way around the Clear Reports menu.  The formula language is also virtually the same allowing me to copy and paste formulas directly from Crystal to Clear.  Below are the most important differences I found so far. I have also added Clear Reports to my comparison of alternative reporting tools which provides a more detailed feature comparison.

Note: The comments below are based on version 21, which this customer uses.  The latest version is 24 and may have improvements over 21.

Major disappointments:

• You can’t make modifications in preview. You must make all changes on the design tab. Every time you go back to the design tab you will have to refresh to preview.
• You can’t save the report with data. This is one of my favorite Crystal features, allowing me to work off line.
• All summaries are created as named objects, similar to Crystal running totals. When you create them you can determine if they behave as running totals or normal summaries.
• In Crystal you could copy a row of subtotals and past them into the report footer to make the same row of grand totals, because summary fields in Crystal are relative to the section containing them. You can’t do that with the named summaries in iNet.
• None of the third party software in Crystal Reports’ ecosystem will work with iNet.

Minor annoyances:

• You can’t drag multiple fields from the field explorer to the report design area. You must drag them out one at a time.
• When you drag an object from the field explorer there is no visible object outline to guide your placement. The object outline IS there when you move an object, but not when you first bring it out from the field explorer.
• The record count does not display in the status bar of the preview screen.
• iNet has a format painter (paintbrush) toolbar button, but you can’t make it “sticky” so a format can be applied to multiple fields by clicking on them in turn. You must click the paint brush again every time you want to apply it.

Other differences:

• iNet is licensed by server and the designer is free.
• iNet will run on Linux as well as Windows.
• iNet shows a real-time list of ‘problems’ (formula errors, unused fields, etc)
• iNet shows the data-type of all fields in the field explorer, not just database fields