Wow I did not know CR was still around! I used that back when I was doing my BS about 10 years ago. A lot of people used it with Visual Basic.

I remember learning to interface VB with Microsoft's Word libraries in order to create reports in DOC to avoid using Crystal Reports (this mainly just for college projects). I also remember one real-life project (for a restaurant I did during college) where we proposed the client to have DOC reports and he was amazed that it could be done.

OTOH, I ted to think that those things like CR, JIRA, Lotus Notes and others are a necessary evil. The mere fact that they continue existing is because they solve some kind of problem (otherwise people won't use them, right?). I guess the main problem of these platforms is that once they grow so big (trying to accomplish a lot of things) they become difficult to manage or use.