Crystal Reports- +ve's and -ve's

Crystal reports is a very popular Reporting tool. Below is an attempt to measure its effectiveness in reporting.

+ve's

1. The simplicity of the tool.The tool asks for a connection and once you provide it either to a DB or a cube the report can be filled up through drag and drop of the fileds.
2. The parameter feature can be used for Yes/No questions etc as it does not have any radio buttons kind of feature.
3. The supress feature can be used extensively to get various functionalities. It depends on how and where you use it.
4. The formula fields can be used in tandem with supress feature and parameters,this can make many complex things simpler.
5. There are feature like on demand subreports(hyperlink to other reports) or normal subreports as well.

-ve's

1. Deleting any unused parameters is a pain sometimes as they dont get deleted and cause problems later
2. Only one level of sub report nesting is available.(You cant have subreport within a subreport)
3. We can have only one query for a report.(We cant have separate queries for different measures as in BO)
4. Aliases can be added but they really act weirdly.(so avoid them)
5. Formatting the report takes double the report development time.
6. Tables cant be added to the report(Lines have to be drawn..!!!)
7. Export feature is good only for PDF format. For other formats you cant even compare the report and the exported copy.