Access (2002) vs. Crystal Reports (8.0 standard)

[frontside]

I’m looking for ideas and thoughts regarding when to use Access as a report generator and when to use Crystal Reports.
I have an internship at a computer consultant business that’s in the startup point of expanding the software/business system division. I got the assignment of learning both programs (I started with Access) and now I’m learning CR.
The work I’m doing will be a part of an investigating paper comparing the two systems by doing a fairly complex report in both programs.
The Report gets the data from a business system that does not have the ability to give me the report I’m doing in CR and Access.
There are several viewpoints that I would like some comments on.

Query times, Licenses, import or linked fields, how reliable is the use of ODBC (I’ve had some problem in Access), is it fair to compare Access 2002 with CR 8.0 standard? (Should I upgrade CR to 9+ pro or developer?)
I’m having trouble with null values and the formatting from a text number to a date format used in a datediff function (in both programs).

The obvious benefit of Access is the price (since most have office installed already) and the ability to put in your own fields and alter the data. CR feels like more user friendly and easier to do selects and formatting text/fields in.

Is there anyone that has the experience of doing reports in both these programs and have some good arguments on when to use Access and when to use CR?

Mikael Nilsson
Sweden

ps. I will post this question in a CR thread as well (to get objective thoughts from both CR and Access gurus

 

[cristobol]

Alright buddy. Recognize this fact, CR is strictly report software, Access is a full blown flat-file DBMS (kinda iffy on the MS, but anyway). If you just need reports made, CR is the way to go. I've used both. Don't worry about upgrading to developer unless you need to imbed CR in your apps. And even then, I think I remember ways to get around using the Dev pack (legally of course). I concur with your statement that CR is more user friendly. It's very quick to learn and you can start doing some fairly insane reports very quickly. I'm not sure if you can use Access to simply do reports from random (read: other) DBMS (but I don't doubt it's possiblity). But why would you want to do that. Another nice thing about CR is that you can get the enterprise server and serve reports via the web. That's where the licensing issues really come in.
Short version. CR is the way to go for report generation. It's really scalable and easy to learn and use.
Access is good too, but why bring out the toolbox when all you need is a pair of pliers?
As far as price/licence, I don't know the cost. CR is reasonable, and you can help non-MS software companies strive. Not that I have problems with MS.
Another nice thing is that you can export CR reports to JPG so you can distribute them without the need for a license. Hah!
Let me know if you have more ?'s
It's late so I most likely rambled. Thanks for getting this far. I might have more coherent comments tomorrow, we'll see.
Hoped this provides you with a good starting point.