Crystal Reports 2008 fails when called from e Web Service under 64bit OS

Question

I have discovered that Crystal Reports 2008 doesn't work when called from a Web Service running under 64bit Windows platforms (in my case Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP 64bit); practically no object is instantiated. I've tried several solutions without success.
Before creating a wrapper component to use under COM+, is there anybody who has a better and cheaper solution than creating another component to wrap CR 2008 ?

Answer 1

Hi Sergio,
Before I mark this post as assumed answered I would just like to say and re-iterate that at this time there is no one answer and we fully understand your concerns. As you know in CR 6.0 it came in 16 and 32 bit versions because at the time 32 bit was relatively new but 16 bit was the norm. This is also true for 32 to 64 bit, 32 is the norm and 64 bit is relatively new. We know and are well aware 64 bit is the future and we are working as quickly as we can to move in that direction. Because of the complexity of the Product it's not simply a matter of re-compiling all of our dll's in 64 bit format. The core of our data connectivity with our database drivers which are dependant on third party clients must also need to support 64 bit modes. This as well as Printer drivers also need to be 64 compatable, there are a multitude of dependencies that we rely on that must add 64 bit support. As a programmer you are well aware of the issues around Thunking back and forth between 32 to 64 bits, it can cause delays and potentially loss of data which is a whole other issue. Not to mention also that we would have to ship both versions potentially doubling the size of the distribution packages or doubling the size of the dll's to have the ability to work in both modes. Relatively speaking of course, it would not be double the size but the variables would need to be able to allocate 32 or 64 memory blocks.
The other option is to produce 2 separate versions, this alone is a massive project. Any issue would need to be fixed in separate code streams.
So I'm sure you can see it's not simply a matter of saying yes we support 64 bit. It's a massive project that is going to take time to do and we have to wait for the third party drivers to commit also.
Visual Studio .NET 2005 and 2008 is the only option if you want true 64 bit but you will be limited on what DB's you can support and export formats you can export to. They are the only drivers we did convert to 64 bit.
Thank you for your understanding
Don