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September 17, 2003

Query, Reporting, and Analysis

Gaze Deeper

Most of the changes in Crystal Analysis aren't in the interface

by David McAmis

Continued from Page 1

From Simple to Complex

You can create analytic applications by adding multiple pages to a document, which you can navigate by using a tabbed interface at the bottom of the document (similar to Excel worksheets) or "Analysis Buttons." You can drop these components onto a page and use them to navigate between pages in your application. For simple applications, you can associate a page with the button. Users clicking on the button will be taken to the specified page.

You can create more complex applications by associating some criteria with the button: You can specify the action that occurs with the page transition (such as drill down or filter). When you click on a button on the Monthly Sales page, you're taken to a Product Sales page with data filtered based on the month that was selected in the original page. (See Figure 2.)

One key component in the upgrade is the inclusion of parameters. This component makes it possible for you to create a Crystal Report that lets users drill down into the details. You simply provide a link to a Crystal Analysis document and use parameters to specify which opening page of the document and OLAP cube you want to use.

You can also use parameters to set the active members of a row or column or the slice member of a dimension. For example, you could create a profit and loss report and let users drill down into different organizational units. When they want to analyze expenditures of a particular unit, they can drill across to a Crystal Analysis document that lets them slice and dice the data to gather more information.

For hardcore Excel power users, Crystal Analysis now has an enhanced add-in that lets users export data from Crystal Analysis to Excel and maintain a link to the back-end data source. Users get a familiar environment without having to continually export the data and update a spreadsheet.

Crystal Enterprise

Another recently introduced feature in Crystal Enterprise (the framework for distributing documents created using Crystal Reports and Crystal Analysis) is the ability to publish Excel spreadsheets to Crystal Enterprise and schedule when to refresh the data. Excel users can continue to perform their own analysis in a more structured environment, eliminating the need to continually extract and transform data.

Crystal Enterprise provides thin-client delivery across the Web for publishing and viewing Crystal Analysis documents with no installations required on the browser. Experienced users, however, may still prefer to have Crystal Analysis installed on their machines in order to develop their own analytic applications.

When it comes down to features, Crystal Analysis has one glaring omission: scripting. Other products in this category extend their functionality through JavaScript or VBScript, giving developers the flexibility they need to create complex applications. With that said, Crystal Analysis stacks up well against other OLAP toolsets. Its integration with Crystal Reports and Crystal Enterprise make it a real contender.

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Editor's note: At press time, Business Objects had announced plans to acquire Crystal Decisions and an intention to keep the Crystal Decisions products intact.

David McAmis [dmcamis@hotmail.com] is an IT consultant, journalist, author, broadcaster, and expert in business intelligence who lives and works in Sydney, Australia.