General overview of Crystal Decisions for a layperson

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Looking for overview information on Crystal Decisions (including Reports), including short examples. I have never seen the software...and the web site is not getting me there.

Do their tools allow for realtime data updates from data sources? (for example, updating stock prices in a presentation seamlessly from a data source)

Thanks much

 

[dcm]

Bgetz: The short version:

Crystal Reports - 3 versions (Standard - doesn't do all you'd like to!), Professional (does enough for a power user), Developer (can be used to embed existing report designs into an application or deliver as Web based views)

Both of the latter can nadle a wide variety of data sources including native drivers for about 10 of the most popular databases plus anything with an ODBC driver!

Next level up is either Seagate Info v7.5 or Crystal Enterprise which use the file formats (and the design tools) included in Crystal Reports to deliver reports to an organisation (i.e. have extra features like security and scheduling, event driven processing, scaleable architecture.... ). Definitely worth a look as most users wake up quite quickly to the fact that designing reports is less than half of the problem! Both have Web delivery built in with Enterprise the latest using XML and ASP whereas Info has Windows desktop as well and includes ability to create and view OLAP cubes!

Need any more just ask David C. Monks
david.monks@chase-international.com

http://www.chase-international.com

Accredited Crystal Decisions Enterprise Partner