Posts Tagged ‘Crystal Reports’

SAP Crystal Reports Roadmap History

February 24th, 2011

When Crystal Decisions was purchased by BusinessObjects the Crystal Report designer tool was a Windows executable and had just integrated a full semantic layer that would allow multiple reports to access multiple connections and include multi-level business logic definitions in the form of a Business View.  BusinessObjects already had a mature Universe semantic layer as part of its platform and was already moving to a Java based report editor accessible over the web as well as on the desktop.

While the BusinessObjects reporting tools becaome integrated into the existing Crystal Enterprise based server engines, the semantic layers remained independent.  Each tool’s implementation of semantic layer management was quite different and each had its strengths.  In the XI version Crystal could access both the Business View as well as limited support to connect to the same Universe but the integration stopped there.

In the upcoming SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise release there is a new semantic  layer that begins to bring the best of the Universe and the Business View into a single Information Management tool.  SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise will be able to take advantage of the new semantic layer in a consistent interface as it’s Web Intelligence and Dashboard Design (previously Xcelsius ) cousins.

For connecting to other data connection types the SAP Crystal  Reports 2011 product will be released to replace its 2008 predecessor.  Later on these two versions will be combined into a single release.   Te get access to either you buy a single license…meaning by one and you get the other.

Both  Crystal Reports for Enterprise and Crystal Reports 2011 are now also available as a Java application  that allows installation on Windows and Linux based desktop machines.

Reminders on what we focus on

April 7th, 2009

This lat week I was reading some of my favorite blogs and some new ones as well. I ran across some great posts that serve as reminders to those of us working in the BI world. This may be clear cut stuff, but it is always nice to get some reminders.

1. Why we report in the first place:

This is a nice post on the purpose of BI- In Business Intelligence is for making Business Decisions the folks over at Intelligence Matrix give us a great example and reminder.

2. A great post over at Beye Network about a new Journal and the definition of Business Intelligence. This is a great new resource and one fantastic post.

3. This is a wonderful post on the right way to look at BOE and publishing reports. Crystal Reports version control is interesting.

4. And this one is just funny. I guess SAP is restricting the porn access for Crystal Reports??? What, well read more here: Ken Hamady say no more porn

Until next time, enjoy these reads.

SAP AG staying on top of Crystal and BOBJ

March 28th, 2009

Check out this press release from SAP Business Objects and McManus Software + Consulting. Looks like they have released the Crystal Developer Advantage license to help ISV’s like McManus. They have a suite called Launch Applications and they are pretty cool. Everything from extending reporting to web applications to real time auditing of your BOBJ environment.

Here is the press release:

http://www.b-eye-network.com/channels/1543/view/9950

Oh, and about this blog. We will scour the blogosphere for anyhting and everything that is news int he Crystal Reports and Web Intelligence world.

Have fun!