I'm just wondering how anyone is finding Relius version 8.0+ to be? I'm currently on 7.3 and pretty happy with it...it seems like corrections to the 8.0+ versions on the website happen almost everyday, so I've been alittle leery about upgrading. Any pros &/or cons/comments appreciated.

We have been running on 8.2 for a while now. Usual change over work for custom Crystal Reports due to table changes. Otherwise not bad. Problems are in odd ball areas - go to the support page, fixes and updates and look at the .htm files for what the fixes are.

Also check out known issues under the administration section under support. It really isn't all that bad and a substantial improvment to 7.3

They have worked most of the bugs out now. The new features are great especially if you are using the daily platform.

It has been an 'adventure' so to speak using the user defined fields in custom reports.
The instructions are certainly weak in that area.

For example, all user fields have been moved to a table called UDFDATA
If your report pulls user fields from both census and plan data you need to add that table twice. Perhaps that concept is obvious to everyone but me and it was considered wasteful to put it in writing.
I have verified the database, then added the UDFDATA table and found I had to reverify the database so that the UDFDATA table would be updated. I've used an expression USERALPHA 11 + USERALPHA 12, and found if there was nothing in USERALPHA 12 it imply won't print the expression. fun stuff like that!
But, on the plus side, at least each user field is now listed and you don't have to write the extra stuff we have had to do in the past. If you want field 50 you can simply pull that field.

Nulls evaluate differently at the program level. A Null when added to something renders a result of null. There are actually three possible outcomes when nulls are involved, true, false, and null. The best policy is to convert all variables to a specifically 'typed' variable, i.e. string, number. Use dateserial function for date comparison.

As an example, the function below checks to see whether term date is null before it evaluates it
against another date. This has to happen or it will evaluate the null as meeting the required condition (in this case term prior to eligibility).

'''Basic syntax
lngExceptionFlag1 =0
if isnull({PLANEE.TERMDATE}) then
if {PLANEE.STATCD}= "T" or {PLANEE.STATCD}= "Z" then
''' other coding goes here
lngExceptionFlag1=1
end if
else
if {PLANEE.STATCD}= "T" or {PLANEE.STATCD}= "Z" then
''' check whether or not term date precedes eligibility using dateserial

end if

end if
formula = lngExceptionFlag1

For user defined fields, to append one to the other or concatenate, you could try using ToText() to convert to a blank (""), which is different than null. Also if you use Basic syntax, use '&' to concatenate.

Bill

We like to be on "the cutting edge", so we upgrade as quickly as possible. As a result, we tend to find a lot of the little quirks before anyone else does.

All in all I much prefer many of the features that are in 8.2 over 7.3, I think it's well worth your while to upgrade.