License for Crystal Report for Visual Studion 2005

Question

Hi All,
I am developing reports for my application using crystal reports for VS 2005.  I read on microsoft site (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318102 ) that the free server software supports three active requests to the server.  It further says that developer will need to purchase additional licenses to increase scalability.  I think that our application would need the additional license.  However, i was unable to find a link on business objects site were i can buy the additional license for crystal report for VS 2005.  The link takes me to license for Crystal report 2008.  It would be great if you can answer my following questions:
- what version of crystal reports do we need to purchase?
- do we need license for each implementation or do we need license for the developers only.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Abdul

Answer 1

Great questions! Let's get at em, one at a time:
How would you define a print job?
- A print job will essentially be consumed any time the print engine (crpe32.dll) needs to  do work. So, processing one report = a print job. However, say you have one subreport, now the number of print jobs = 2. Now, say the subreport is in the details section and runs once per record. And you have 100 records. You will be running 1 + 100 print jobs. Paging to another page consumes a print job. Zooming consumes a print job, exporting and printing to a printer consumes a print job. So, depending on the report and the number of users, print jobs may be used up quite quickly. You can increase the print job limit by modifying the PrintJobLimit in the registry. For CR 2008, the reg entry is here:
HKLMsoftware usiness objectssuite 12.0
eport application serverinprocserver
(the above is used irrespective of the SDK (CR, RAS, BOE))
I am not using report viewer to render the report. I use 'ExportToDisk' method to save the report in word or pdf format. Does 'ExportToDisk' make one print job?
- see above. Again, if the report has a subreport, this will consume at least two print jobs.
How much time does a typical print job takes to complete?
- no way to tell in general terms. There are too many variables that will affect this. From how complex the report to database connections to version of runtime
What care shall I take to reduce the print job time?
- Best you can do is ensure that you are destroying the report object once you are done with it (report.close, report.dispose)
Will using Report Application Server (RAS) or Business Objects Enterprise increase the number of concurrent print jobs? If yes then by what amount?
- no it will not
To utilize Report Application Server (RAS) or Business Objects Enterprise, do I just need to use a specific SDK or is there some thing more to it?
- You do need to use the RAS assemblies for RAS, BOE assemblies for BOE. More information is below.
Sample RAS apps:
https://boc.sdn.sap.com/samples/84/1194
An article on RAS:
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/10b840c0-623f-2b10-03b5-9d1913866b32
A power point as to which may be the best SDK to use:
https://boc.sdn.sap.com/node/972
Differences between all the SDKs (webinar):
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/crystalreports-dotnet?rid=/webcontent/uuid/106b8996-067e-2b10-2f8a-d8c136b3e330
BOE samples:
https://boc.sdn.sap.com/samples/84/1193
BOE SDK library:
http://devlibrary.businessobjects.com/BusinessObjectsXIR2SP2/en/devsuite.htm
Ludek