SAP Integration Update Part 4 - Crystal Reports for Enterprise and Custom Structures

[IngoH]

This is the 4th part of my update series and here the links to the previous entries:

• SAP Integration Update Part 1 - Crystal Reports for Enterprise and SAP NetWeaver BW
• SAP Integration Update Part 2 - Crystal Reports for Enterprise and Hierarchies from SAP NetWeaver BW
• SAP Integration Update Part 3 - More Hierarchies with Crystal Reports for Enterprise

This time I would like to share how Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.0 is able to leverage custom structures defined in a BEx Query.

The image below shows a BEx Query in the Query Designer with a custom structure in the rows - called Product Structure. In addition this custom structure is organized in a hierarchical manner.

Until now Crystal Reports 2008 would treat such a custom structure like a single characteristic and provide the user with a single field and in our example three rows of data.

The "problem" with the existing behavior is, that the user can not select specific elements from the custom structure for the particular report. For example you might have a financial structure with 100 structure elements but would like to focus your report on 20 structure elements.

Now lets take a look at how Crystal Reports for Enterprise is treating the BEx Query.

In the screen above you will notice that on the left hand side Product Structure is shown as part of the overall available meta-data but especially it is shown with a hierarchical element below.

On the right hand side I included the hierarchical element from the Product Structure into my resultset and I opened up the Member Selector. In the Member Selector you can see that not only does Crystal Reports for Enterprise provide you with the list of structure elements and you can define which elements you would like to see as part of your report, but also the hierarchical structure is reflected.

Now as part of my report I can then easily show my key figures and my custom structure elements.

Overall Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.0 is not only giving you access to the custom structure of your BEx query, it also is able to recognize the hierarchical nature if you defined it in the BEx query and provide you with the list of members for the custom structure so that you are able to select explicit members for your report.