I think most important names have been dropped in the thread. Cognos and BusinessObjects are big players in BI (and reporting).
Both suites offer a host of functionality, besides pure reporting, and are by no means 'cheap'.
I thought that Crystal was incorporated in the Visual Studio .NET. And I also assume you can distribute your reports built with .NET using the Web without additional licensing. So you could get away with the cost of your Visual Studio license (under $2500).
Has probably less features than the stand-alone version of Crystal...
(From the Crystal web site : )
quote:
A Crystal Reports .NET reporting component is fully integrated. It is designed for developing and testing server or web applications. Although you may deploy your applications using this bundled component, it is best suited for internal pilot within a workgroup. User requests beyond a capacity threshold will fail.
A bunch of other restrictions apply too. However the full license of Crystal is not nearly as costly as a Cognos or BO implementation in a webbased application.
Edited by - NPeeters on 06/17/2003 07:44:20 AM