CRYSTAL REPORTS – Crystal Components

I.	Crystal Enterprise

Crystal Enterprise is an architecture that allows data access, reporting and information delivery without imposing a new set of standards and processes. It provides a common infrastructure for reporting and application development and is designed to integrate with the existing data in a business. It ensures that information that is time-sensitive is readily available. This is done by the use of a robust multi-server platform structure that has built in distribution capabilities like alerting users of critical information via emails or portals. Multi-format reports make it easier to tailor the reports to the destination it is required at – FTP sites, network printers or email. 
This functionality is made available by Crystal Reports and Crystal Analysis, which together with Crystal Enterprise form the Crystal Design Solutions, as shown in the figure below:

CRYSTAL ENTERPRISE

CRYSTAL ANALYSIS

CRYSTAL REPORTS

Figure1.    Crystal Components

uses

uses

As shown in the figure, Crystal Enterprise depends on Crystal Reports and Crystal Analysis to provide its functionality: Crystal Reports provides reporting capability, Crystal Analysis provides guided analysis and analytic reports and together they allow Crystal Enterprise to provide users with an all round data access, reporting and delivery system.

II.	Crystal Reports

Crystal Reports enables the user to produce reports using a huge variety of formatting options and data sources. It permits the user to view different levels in a report using the drill down capability. Users can sort and filter information, refresh reports to reflect changes in the database, print reports and export them to a variety of formats including PDF, Excel and Word.
The combination of Crystal Reports and Crystal Enterprise is what provides the all-round data access, presentation and information delivery capability. The functionality is accessed through the developer interfaces that are a part of the software, and provide complete control over report listing, processing, modification, viewing, and administration.

-	For a more detailed description of Crystal Reports, please refer to sub paper 1, “Crystal Reports- A sub paper.”

III.	Crystal Analysis

Crystal Analysis allows the creation of analytic reports. It uses On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) to analyse business data and this analysis enables users to better understand the data and what it means, thereby placing them in a better position while making decisions that impact the organization. 

It uses an environment similar to Crystal Reports- easy-to-use with drag-and-drop capabilities and rich visualization techniques that permits users to build analytic reports and modify and revise them as required, without needing an IT expert to do the needful. It supports servers like Microsoft SQL Server, Hyperion Essbase, SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW), and IBM DB2 OLAP Server.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
The design environment allows users to specify calculations that they have defined; include charts with text as well as highlight important information. It also makes the finding of specific data attributes easy, with its search by name, level, properties and attributes capability. This function also permits drilling down from a specific member to specific data by double clicking on the member.
Crystal Analysis produces reports that allow users to hide unnecessary dimensions of the data as well as navigate through multiple data views. It also aids the users in identifying trends by features like variances, trend lines and moving averages that can be added along with calculations to business views of the data and then publishes these reports to the Web with the help of Crystal Enterprise. It also enables the distribution of these reports without security issues over corporate portals, intranets, extranets and the Internet. It delivers these reports securely, without needing firewalls, downloads or plug-ins.