Licensing and Deployment¶

Flex2Crystal Licensing¶

You receive a 30-day restricted license when you download Flex2Crystal. Please contact Mertech sales or technical support to get a fully functional developer license. The developer license is available for later download with your Mertech account.

Crystal Reports Licensing¶

There are several Crystal Reports licensing options available.

1. Crystal Reports Designer: You can purchase Crystal Report Designer from Mertech for approximately $495. This standalone designer is what most DataFlex developers use.

2. Crystal Reports for Visual Studio Plugin: If you already have Visual Studio Standard Edition (or higher), the Crystal Reports plugin can be downloaded for free. This plugin embeds the Crystal Report Designer in Visual Studio. You can then create your reports in a Visual Studio project and copy them to your DataFlex project.

3. Crystal Reports for Visual Studio Runtime: To run your Crystal Reports applications you need to install the Crystal Reports runtime engine on the target machine. This runtime version is free and allows you unlimted distribution of all applications except for web applications. In order to distribute a web application, you need Crystal Reports Developers Advantage Runtime.

4. Crystal Reports Developers Advantage Runtime: This is a runtime license that provides the rights to embed the Crystal Reports runtime in any number of web applications and redistribute them to anyone. This license is available for a one time fee of $2495 paid to SAP.

5. Crystal Reports Server: This is a Business Intelligence tool that provides ad hoc reporting and a web viewer for Crystal Reports. It can be licensed either as a named user or concurrent users. Licensing starts around $8000. Most DataFlex applications do not require this product.

Deployment¶

Once you have completed your DataFlex application you are ready to deploy your finished project to a client site. The following steps are required.

1. Install the DataFlex runtime on the client computer.

2. Install your DataFlex application on the client computer. You can simply copy the workspace setup from your development environment. The following workspace directories are usually copied to the client computer:

   • Bitmaps

   • Data, which usually includes your report (.rpt) files

   • Help

   • Programs

3. The Flex2Crystal Developer installer includes a deployment installer in a default installation in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Mertech Data Systems\Flex2Crystal Developer Edition\DeploymentInstall folder. To install Flex2Crystal and the Crystal Reports runtime, use this installer. If you’d like the deployment installer to run silently, pass it a command line of /exenoui /qn:

flex2crystal-deployment-x.x.xxxx.x-setup.exe /exenoui /qn

4. After installation you’ll need to put the distribution license you received from Mertech into the <Program Files x86>\Mertech Data Systems\Flex2Crystal\bin folder.