It was once said to me that Access and Crystal share history

[bill]

In particular, I was told that the ACCESS REPORT WRITER and Crystal shared lineage.

Perhaps ACCESS REPORT WRITER was licensed from Crystal or vise versa?

Any truth there and if so, can you provide a link?

Thanks!

 

[SydneyGeek]

Hi Bill,

No info on your question, sorry, but there may be something in it!

They certainly use the same banded report layout, and VB-based coding...
I'll go for a dig sometime today, see what comes up.

Denis

 

[giacomo]

I found this link which is a history of Crystal Reports, it makes mention of Crystal being bundled with VB in 1992 but never says anything about Access.

http://www.prodavisro.com/prodavis/prodavis_en/crystal/crystal.html

 

[bill]

Thats a interesting read especially regards 1985 making me wonder where Microsoft bought Access. As I understand, Microsoft did NOT Access but instead purchased it...

Perhaps the Crystal / Access connection occured prior to MS buying Access?

 

[giacomo]

I remember reading once that Microsoft bought FoxPro and used some of the technology when they created Access. So Access was developed by Microsoft using the technology of an application they purchased.

 

[SydneyGeek]

Wikipedia has this article on Access. Version 1 was released around 1991, close to the time that MS bundled Crystal with VB (and now VB.Net and Visual Studio.Net)

So, maybe there was a licensing deal at the time for the reporting features?

Certainly, FoxPro was purchased so MS could get their hands on the Jet database engine (which still drives Access, but will be retired in version 2007)

Denis

 

[VicRauch]

My understanding (memory) was that FoxPro was purchased by Microsoft after they already had Access. FoxPro was purchased for the technology used in query optimization, which they put into Access around Access 95 or 97.