Newbie Question..

[sujark]

Hello all,

Though I've been using Crystal Reports a lot, I'm totally new to Crystal enterprise. So, I have a basic question about Crystal Enterprise 9.

Does Crystal Enterprise 9 has an in-built Report Designer? If no, does it imply that I need 2 products - 1.Crystal Reports and 2.Crystal Enterprise to create and publish my reports on the intranet?

Thanks for the help.

 

[MJRBIM]

Crystal Enterprise 9 PREMIUM edition has a built-in AD-HOC tool for creating and modifying reports. So depending on the version of CE you are running, you may have that tool.

In general, most people on other CE versions create the reports in Crystal Reports then publish them for web use through Crystal Enterprise.

 

[synapsevampire]

Generally you need Crystal Reports too, but this depends on your version and how you intend to create reports.

Crystal Enterprise is a scheduling and distribution tool for Crystal Reports.

The Professional and Premium versions can include report design functionality, such as Smart Reporting, and ad hoc reporting.

As with Crystal Reports, you can create WEB content without Crystal Enterprise using RAS.

I suggest that you contact CrystalDecisions or someone well versed with the products to do a needs analysis before you start tossing $ about.

-k

 

[sujark]

Thanks for the input.

Our company is planning to convert the existing reports written using a third Party tool, into crystal reports.

Are these tools provided by Crystal Enterprise have similar features to CR Report Designer? The reason why I'm asking this is: Some of the existing reports that we are planning to re-write in Crystal Reports have graphs, and some have multiple grouping in the reports. Can these reports be re-written using ad-hoc reporting tool or the smart-reporting tool?

Thanks.

 

[MJRBIM]

The Ad-Hoc tool festures most of the same featutes, but if they are "complex" reports you are better off developing them in CRYSTAL REPORTS.

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
It appears ( from your latest posting) that the reports are not currently in Crystal Reports format, so the only solution is to redesign them using Crystal Reports Professional.
Only after that, do you need to determine which method of web-enabling you want to use...( Full CE or RAS).

 

[synapsevampire]

I would suggest that you go ahead and get Crystal Reports, it's much simpler.

What format are these reports in, and what's the third party tool?

-k

 

[sujark]

Currently, the reports are written using Component One(VSView) and Visual basic. The reports are usually printed in PDF format or a Text format. Due to new requirements that stream in from customers, the current application is becoming impossible to maintain due to its relative lack of configurability and scalability.

The ultimate goal of the project is to use Crystal Reports for better configurability and publish the reports in the intranet.

Thanks.