Web Publishing Crystal Reports

[NickEveritt]

Please ignore my ignorance, I am doing some research for an MI project. But Im sure you can all help.

Requirement:
to publish reports onto an Intranet and also available to certain clients on an extranet. The reports are all pre-defined and will need to be targeted to users. I.e. users login and will be presented with pre-produced reports.
Ideally they will need drill down and roll-up, sort type functions. Nobody produced their own reports.

Resouces:
Crystal Reports Pro 8.0 (will upgrade if required) and an .ASP developer.


Can someone please offer advice on the best way forward, with minimized licencing costs.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[SteveCulshaw]

I'd also be interested to hear of any suggestions on the best way forward on this. Cheers,
Steve C.

 

[sam1one]

I believe you would definitely need Crystal Enterprise at minimum Standard, but Professional Crystal Enterprise would be the best. From there, you could use Crystal Publishing Wizard(a tool available in Crystal Enterprise) Then it is probably very routine from there on out. (Though I must add I have only just installed Crystal Enterprise 8)A person familiar with CE is probably more valuable than .ASP. Have any of these reports been developed by your team yet?
sam@qasys.com

 

[JoeCrystal]

The least expense is to stay with Crystal Reports especially if you have an ASP resource. Version 8.0 has the least restricted licensing. Version 8.5 and above is must more restrictive (ie broadcasting licensees, etc). You can write your ASP front end to all the users to select the report, prompt for parameters, userid/password etc. You install the Web Components to handle the report processing from your IIS.

If you are not concerned with more than 1 to 5 concurrent users than you get a 5 licensee version of Crystal Enterprise with Developer version 8.5 but it does not have a the features. The most important me able to setup users etc.

The most expensive will be to go the Crystal Enterprise route because you are talking about a substantial investment ($20K and above)

 

[NickEveritt]

Thanks for that.

My understanding of the broadcast licence (at 10K a year) is that if over 50 people will view a report that is automated (which it will be) you need the licence.

For example, from research so far, we can produce templates in Crystal Reports, use ReCrystallize to put it into an ASP page, and design round these published reports to pick up parameters etc. This is an extremely cheap way of doing things as regards the cost of the software licences so far. This is all ruined by needing a Broadcast licence.

Is it me or does the broadcast licence sound like the most unenforcable concept on the face of this earth?

N