Ad-hoc reporting...

[sujark]

Hello all,

I am in the process of suggesting a new reporting tool for our company, most probably Crystal Reports/Crystal Enterprise.

Presently our customers have lot of requirements where they want to customize the report formats - ie, the layout of the report is very dependent on the particular needs of the user and should reduce the dependency of the developer, for report changes. (Ad-hoc reporting).

Does Crystal reports 9 has these features? Does it provide extensive Ad-hoc reporting features? Do the users need to know SQL for using the ad-hoc reporting features?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the help.

 

[MJRBIM]

Crystal Enterprise 9 PREMIUM has a web-based Ad-Hoc tool that can be used to create/modify reports based on current reports or "managed" queries.

We are considering it for a client, but are still at the assessment phase. The one demo I have seen looks pretty slick - but I haven't tried it for myself yet.

The Crystal Ad-Hoc PDF info sheet is at :

http://www.crystaldecisions.com/products/crystalenterprise/downloads/ad_hoc_flyer.pdf

 

[sujark]

Thanks for the input.

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Just a note of caution:

When users indicate that they want to customize the layout
of a report , that is different from ad-hoc reporting..In ad-hoc reports the entire report ( data source, tables/data used, records/fields used , links/joins and the layout ( the look-and-feel)) is created/modifed at run-time.

Unless you are sure of your users' skill in designing Crystal Reports, providing TRUE ad-hoc ability to them can cause problems with the CE system if badly designed reports start using up resources that are shared by all your CE users and services...