To paraphrase Coleridge in Rime of the Ancient Mariner, there is data, data, everywhere, but no information to help you think.

But at least you have the data. All you need to do next is create useful reports and distribute them effectively. Departmental solutions work acceptably with standard databases in a local area network, but they can run into problems when involving legacy systems, wide area networks, different machine types, software drivers, and manual installation.

The corporate intranet promised to let us disseminate this type of information throughout the organization to disparate platforms and without the burdensome manual overhead that client-based packages involve. Crystal Enterprise 8.0 is supposed to live up to this promise in a robust yet affordable manner. With the venerable Crystal Reports as the underlying reporting tool, Crystal Enterprise takes its place on the server to orchestrate the presentation of these reports.

Structured Repository

The most significant feature of Crystal Enterprise is that it is a reporting repository. Instead of merely placing a group of reports on the Web server and then pointing to them from HTML pages, Crystal Enterprise stores the reports and report metadata in a database. Depending on your installation, that database will be either Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Access.

Via the Crystal Management Console or the Import Wizard in Crystal Reports, you add reports to the database and maintain them. On the client side, the ePortfolio is used to access that store via the Web.

Browser UI With Security

EPortfolio is the most noticeable piece of Crystal Enterprise to the end user. EPortfolio is the Web-based interface that is used to access, view, and schedule reports. Although you could create a customized, pure HTML interface to access the reports, you would lose many features.

Most important, because ePortfolio is also the front end to the security you can place on the reports through the Crystal Management Console, you would lose the security features if using a custom browser interface. Using the Management Console, you can restrict access to reports via NT or custom security. You can also group reports together to make it easier for users to find them.

Both ePortfolio and the Management Console also work with the Automated Process Scheduler (APS) running on the server. Two of the main jobs of the APS are to schedule report runs and monitor server use. With Crystal Reports' scheduling feature, you can schedule reports to run at off-peak hours while still maintaining proper security and history. You can control the reports held in history by time period or size. Through ePortfolio, the end user sees historical snapshots with full security and without touching the data source.

Multiserver Support

The server management portion of APS is designed to distribute workload between report servers in a multiserver environment. This same feature is used for redundancy and failover in case of server problems. These features combine with the Page and Cache Servers for a very stable yet quick back end.

Having all these components may sound cumbersome, but they install and configure easily. The components work with any Web server that supports Common Gateway Interface. The client requires certain browsers, but if you have a custom HTML interface to the reports instead of one using ePortfolio, your browser requirement may be different.

Scalable, Mid-Level

Crystal Enterprise is geared toward the business that has a corporate intranet and needs to distribute Web reports but may not be in the market for a full enterprise information system or reporting solution (such as Cognos provides, for example).

Crystal Enterprise can also be used across the Internet to enable remote locations with consistent reporting capabilities. This use points to one of the best features of Crystal Decisions' reporting products as a whole: their scalability. Many businesses start with a single version of Crystal Reports and then grow the installed base and distribution. The ease of use, reasonable price-point, and tolerant machine requirements make this a very easy solution. Often the implementation may start in a single department and then spread to other pockets of information before finally becoming an enterprise solution.

You Carry the Back End

One area that must be addressed in any size deployment, however, is that most installations will still need a data staging area. In almost all cases, data direct from a production system is not set up for presentation and so needs some massaging.

Although Crystal Enterprise does include the components of the former Crystal Analysis for connection to OLAP servers, this is still a very front-end product. You'll need to construct a good data store to support it. The good news is that with the wide variety of connectivity Crystal Enterprise has, whatever database or platform you choose is probably supported.

Good Start

This is an excellent product as a continuation of the Crystal line. It fits perfectly for many companies that are already using Crystal Reports and need that next step in report distribution. It is also an excellent starting place for environments where reporting is not yet occurring. With the sharpening focus of Crystal Decisions and the production of cost-effective solutions such as Crystal Enterprise, there is reason for its popularity.

Michael Carnell [carnellm@palmettobug.com] is a project manager and intranet developer at CareAlliance Health Services in Charleston, S.C.