At the risk of nauseating the readers who have no doubt seen posts like this a thousand times, I am faced with the prospect of migrating a very large Delphi Code base which is currently supported using Delphi 5. (Yes I know, it needn't be said.) This very large code base uses Crystal 8.5 for reporting and of course uses the very fine VCL code from back in the day. I understand that Crystal long ago quit supporting VCL (Delphi) in favor of .NET and I understand all the business reasons for having done so however, I still need to migrate a system that has a report base of well over 300 standard reports and countless custom reports.
The Question:
Is there any practical path for continuing to use Crystal Reports with a Delphi Code Base. We do use .net and indeed have many projects written in C# so there are .net proficiencies however completely rewriting this code base is not an option. In my research I have seen many ideas about this but they all seem a bit dated. My goal would be to update the code to 64 bit (Delphi XE6) and use the latest Crystal 2013. It is my understanding that Delphi XE6 can import .net assemblies much like it could import activeX. I am hoping someone can tell me if moving to Crystal 2013 and XE6 is practical or even doable.
Thanks in advance for all ideas and comments
Gary