The Crystal ActiveX Control (OCX)
The Crystal ActiveX Control (OCX) is one of the oldest development technologies available to developers in Crystal Reports. When OCX was first released in Crystal Reports 4.5, it was based on the latest ActiveX technology from Microsoft, thus offering state-of-the-art reporting for Visual Basic developers. Today, however, its capabilities pale in comparison to the power and flexibility available in the RDC.
- The OCX control lacks programming depth and complete Report Engine functionality.
- While the Crystal Report Engine provides features that are conducive to a hierarchical object modelwhere each report is broken down into sections with objectsthis type of hierarchy isn't represented in an OCX control. At the time of its original development, the OCX revolutionized report integration because it provided developers with a graphical interface to integrate existing reports. But all of the Report Engine features can't be represented in the flat model allowed by the OCX.
- In addition, the OCX is a wrapper around the Report Engine, which means it is less efficient and requires the distribution of more runtime components than using the RDC.
Today, the OCX supports only the smallest subsets of Report Engine functionalitythe most common properties and methods. Although it's supported in newer versions, no new features have been added since Crystal Reports 6.
If you're a Visual Basic developer who has used the OCX, you will find the RDC easier to use inside the familiar Visual Basic IDE and by taking advantage of Report Creation experts.