Most organizations are aware of Crystal Reports, either from developers who have used the tool before or through the hundreds of original equipment manufacturer agreements Crystal Decisions has made to bundle its reporting technology with other applications. Although this exposure gives Crystal Reports the advantage of name recognition, it can also work against the product, as most people think of it as "just a report writer" or as a tool for developers.

As a result, when organizations are looking for an enterprise solution, Crystal Reports is often compared against other BI suites and doesn't stack up against the robust feature set that those suites provide. Most people don't realize that when they compare Crystal Reports against other product suites, they're actually looking at the wrong product.

The right product is Crystal Enterprise 9, the Web-based report distribution and scheduling framework for Crystal Reports used to create scalable reporting, analytic, and ad hoc reporting applications on a wide variety of platforms and operating systems.

A Long Lineage

Crystal Enterprise 9 is actually the third release with the Crystal Enterprise name, but it's built on the technology and know-how from another Crystal Decisions product, Seagate Info. Crystal Enterprise replaced Seagate Info after the version 7.5 release and has grown over the past three versions to meet and exceed the feature sets found in its predecessors. This release also brings Crystal Enterprise into line with features found in Crystal Reports 9 and Crystal Analysis 9, the tools used to create reports and analytic content.

To start, a lot of the features that had been incomplete or missing from previous versions of the product are now in it, including the ability to use the new "Crystal Repository" to store objects for use and reuse in your reports. When you want to change a calculation or text that appears in multiple reports, you can change it once and it will be updated in the reports where it appears. All of the features that were introduced in Crystal Reports and Crystal Analysis are reflected here, and the integration between Crystal Enterprise and these content tools is tight: Using the "Save" dialog, you can publish reports and analytic documents direct to Crystal Enterprise.

Out of the Box

Out of the box, Crystal Enterprise provides a default interface called e-Portfolio that allows users to view, schedule, and export reports in a Web browser. For some organizations, this interface may be the only one required. A few quick logo and stylesheet changes, and you can apply your own look and feel. For creating custom user interfaces, Crystal Enterprise has a "Web Wizard" that will walk you through creating your own custom application. This feature is especially handy if you want to integrate Crystal Enterprise into your own intranet or Internet site.

For viewing reports from e-Portfolio or your own custom interface, Crystal Decisions made numerous enhancements to the basic viewers (see Figure 1), including a new HTML viewer that requires no downloaded components but lets you print from the browser, WYSIWYG. A new "interactive" viewer that allows you to navigate large reports quickly is also a definite improvement. From all the viewers, the exporting functionality is vastly improved. Exporting from any Crystal product has always been a point of contention, but, with this release, the functionality has been enhanced to the point where it should quiet even the most vocal critic.

And instead of opening a report using an entire browser, Crystal Enterprise now includes a new "Report Part Viewer" that lets you view part of the report and integrate that piece into your own application. You could use this feature to show a graph from one of your reports on your intranet home page or create a single page showing all your key performance indicators (KPIs). Crystal Enterprise could benefit from more samples showing these types of applications, as you will probably spend some time figuring out how to put all the pieces together.

Regardless of which viewer you choose, you also now have more control over the report navigation when drilling down, through, or across to other reports. The benefit of these enhancements is that it's now easier to create dashboards and custom applications using Crystal Enterprise components.