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Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").

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   the curse of Crystal Reports
Friday, September 26 2025

location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY

I had another unusually productive day working from the cabin in the remote workplace. Unfortunately for me, the work I was doing was related to that Crystal Reports report that needed changing. After having ChatGPT help me rewrite the underlying procedure, I then had to somehow shoehorn an extra column into a report already crowded with thirteen columns. In order to get data to flow into the template from the underlying query, I had to understand Crystal Reports' many quirks and features, and in the process of learning these, my blood began to boil. There were, it turned out, multiple ways that data could be expressed depending on a concept called "groups," which seemed to be a hack around the fact that a report could only be underlain with a single query. (In my reporting system, by contrast, multiple queries are supported, and there is a way to distinguish in the template which query the data needs to come from.) Another huge issue was something I've complained about before: that the underlying file that generates the report is a proprietary blob made to be unreadable by humans. So none of the techniques one learns when working with text files (such as HTML, XML, JSON, CSV, or any programming language) can be applied. One is forced instead to use the UI for everything. And that UI is both ponderously slow and also glitchy, at least when operated via Remote Desktop over a dody cellular connection at a remote Adirondack cabin. I kept complaining to ChatGPT about various terrible user-experience (UX) decisions, and, as agreeable as ever, it was sympathizing. At some point I asked it to compile a list of all my grievances, and here is what it came up with:

Crystal Reports: User Complaints & Pain Points

  1. UI / Designer Issues

    Formula Editor is modal: Covers the data you need to reference, forcing you to memorize field names or alt-tab between windows.

    Hatching/overlay shading: Appears on formula fields and other objects in Design view; conveys "this field might grow" or "type uncertain" but cannot be fully disabled.

    Zoom/magnification: No real magnify tool; only percentage zoom of the entire design surface. Can be awkward for precise alignment.

    Floating Field Explorer: Not enabled by default, but necessary to avoid constant scrolling/searching.

  2. Field / Formula Management

    Obscure formula naming conventions:

    Formulas internally use @ prefix, but this isn't obvious when creating them.

    Existing formulas do not clearly show their name inside the editor.

    Copy/paste difficulty: Cannot easily grab formula names or fields from the editor; must retype or remember.

    Limited search/navigation: Searching for formulas or fields inside the designer is awkward and incomplete.

  3. Data Source / Schema Integration

    Schema refresh is opaque: Crystal doesn't always detect new columns after a stored procedure or view change.

    Field Explorer doesn't auto-update: You often have to manually refresh or re-add the data source.

    Binary .rpt storage:

    Report definitions are stored in unparseable binary blobs.

    Hard or impossible to version-control or diff properly.

    Editing outside the UI is basically impossible.

    Dependence on UI: You cannot fully manage formulas or fields outside the Designer; you're trapped.

  4. Error Handling

    No feedback when stored procedures or views change: Oracle or SQL errors appear only when trying to save or preview.

    Cryptic errors: PL/SQL: SQL Statement ignored and ORA-00942: table or view does not exist require investigation outside Crystal.

  5. Export / Version Control Limitations

    Partial exports only: You can export a "Report Definition" as text, but it is incomplete and not round-trippable.

    Binary format prevents proper diffing: Makes collaboration and history tracking extremely painful.

  6. General UX / Experience

    Feels intentionally hostile: Multiple UI choices, like modal editors and hidden names, seem designed to frustrate.

    Workarounds are cumbersome: Floating windows, external text editors, or second monitors are often required just to survive day-to-day tasks.

    Legacy design: Feels stuck in the 1990s; many features (zoom, formula navigation, schema refresh) are primitive or awkward.

Sometimes complaining to ChatGPT wasn't enough. Other times I yelled out loud or shook my fist, both of which helped me deal with my rage. I also complained to my colleagues in Teams, posting a screen grab from ChatGPT.

At the end of my workday, I unboxed the paddleboard I'd picked up at the gate last evening and then plugged a 12v air pump into the Bolt so I could pump it up quickly. I then carried it down to the lake while Charlotte tagged along. I'd brought a bag of extraneous pieces, assuming it would contain the tail fin. But mostly all it contained was the oar and another air pump, this one human-powered. So when I took the paddleboard out on the lake to cruise south down the western shoreline, I didn't have good control; the board kept wanting to spin around with every use of the paddle. I was also a bit nervous that I would fall off, so I kept mostly to shallow water. Eventually I found a convenient rock to disembark from on Shane's section of lakeshore and carried the paddleboard back through the woods to the dock.

This evening I implemented a number of features on the SolArk Copilot and its humble slave. One important feature was to include slave timing data (such as its millis() count) with the "WhereAndWhen" section of *-delimited data sent to the backend. I also tried to implement a system whereby the master could tell the slave to reset itself. But unfortunately every technique I tried (they were all software techniques) left the slave in a state where it could no longer communicate. ChatGPT was full of ideas, but in the end conceded that what I was doing might well be impossible.


Neville walked fairly close to this chipmunk and he held still the whole time like this. This was on the brief walk I took to the lake and back on my lunch break. Click to enlarge.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?250926

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