BOE/CR data access strategy

[MarkBPV]

I am building a web based UI that gets all its data from a web services API. So the only datasource I have is web services.

I would like to add a BOE XI R2 server to my UI application to store and deliver Crystal Reports. From our research and testing up to this point, the Crystal Reports XI R1 and R2 XML / web services driver is basically not functional, at least for our web service which is MS .NET / IIS. We can't get them to work and attempts to consult BO support or documentation result in ambiguous and/or contradictory answers. So we have come to the conclusion, right or wrong, that the technology is DOA.

My understanding is that Crystal Reports 2008 has a much improved web services driver. However, I also understand that Crystal Reports 2008 is not supported in BOE XI until R3 which isn't scheduled until Q1 of 2008.

So anyway...assuming that Crystal Reports 2008 will eventually work with BOE XI and assuming that the Crystal Reports 2008 web services driver is stable and useable, here is my question:

Can I use BOEs universes to connect to my web services and expose them as datasources proprietary to BOE? In other words, if I can create BOE data objects in a BOE universe, then the reports can consume them and the CR web services driver becomes irrelevant. Assuming this can be done, is this a better strategy? I think I like the idea better because then I can manage the data connections to our web services centrally. That is, if anything ever needs tweaking, I can go to one place in the BOE universe to fix it instead of having to go to every report to configure them.

I am new to BOE so I apologize in advance if my concept of what universes are for and what they can do is completely backwards

Thanks

 

[MarkBPV]

One additional note:

There is no requirement for the reports to be used in anyway outside of BOE. Our application will call them up from the BOE repository and delivered the rendered report in the DHTML viewer.

The RPT file will never need to be out of the BOE system and run on its own (like from a user's desktop or from some other application).

 

[BOBJProduct]

Hi Mark,

Web Services are not supported data sources for Universes. As a rule of thumb, Universes work best off data warehouses while CR is better at accessing transactional data sources.

Universes support a subset of CR data sources.

Cheers, Blair