In Business Objects XI a tool existed for creating QRY files and using these files one could create Crystal reports on them. With CR 2008 onwards this tool is not available to create QRY files to report on them.

If there are reports created on these QRY files and migrated to higher version then these reports just works as static template which only refreshes data. One cannot make many changes to the query or to the data connection of these reports. Now if my underlying database goes under upgrade or there are any schema level changes then these won’t be available to the existing QRY reports. Though one can migrate these reports but it ends with limitations.

Now the question arises can these reports be re pointed to a datasource which would give flexibility in terms of data connection and making changes to query.

Following are some of the key points which one may
utilize to re point these reports:

1. One can use the same query from Crystal query designer and create a new report
   using command object as datasource.
2. Now if the concern is about the formatting of the report. Then one can try one of the
   following
3. Open the existing report in higher version and re point it to the new datasource (command
   object) using set datasource location option in Crystal Reports
4. Save the report as template and use it to create a new report using command object
   as datasource with the query.

This feature (QRY) when I came across very few were
familiar with it so thought to pen it down hope it will be useful.

This week we learned more about what is coming in Crystal Reports for Enterprise.  This is a summary of this week’s ASUG webcast, “What’s new in Crystal 4.1” included some roadmap updates.  Henry Kam and Mike Seblani of SAP were the presenters.  Henry is the Solution Manager for Crystal Reports and BI Platform. Mike is the area product owner for Crystal Reports

Planned BI4.1 ramp-up is May time frame, subject to change.

The usual legal disclaimer applies that what is presented is subject to change.  These are my notes.

Agenda:

• Crystal Reports Overview
• Crystal Reports for Enterprise BI4 SP05
• Planned BI4.1 Crystal Reports for Enterprise
• Question & Answer

Crystal Reports Overview

Figure 1: Source: SAP

Figure 1 describes Crystal Reports.  It is great for operational and external facing reporting and “pixel perfect reports”.

Figure 2: Source: SAP

On the right of Figure 5 describes key capabilities

When you connect to semantic layer; you can model your data

It uses the Microsoft Office paradigm; “wysiwyg”, what you see is what you get

You can publish on the BI platform and can schedule reports

It uses several SDK’s; next generation includes RESTful web services – programming language agnostic to help you embed it with business applications

Figure 3: Source: SAP

Figure 3 shows that BI4 comes with two Crystal “flavors”.

Crystal Enterprise is focused on enterprises using the BI Platform; this is where SAP is placing the innovation effort

Crystal Reports 2011 is for stand-alone customers, same functionality, no regression

On the right 4.1 for Crystal Reports 2011 offers more platform support; as an example if use Linux as backend for BI server, CR 2011 with BI4 didn’t support Red Hat 6.  SAP plans to address this in BI 4.1.

Crystal Reports Today

Figure 4: Source: SAP

In 4.1, Crystal Reports 2011 is going through a rebranding exercise and will be named Crystal Reports 2013 in 4.1 timeframe

Figure 4 shows features today (BI4 SP05) on the left, focusing on report design, data sources, mobile, development and platform features.

Figure 5: Source: SAP

Figure 5 shows what is available in today’s version of Crystal for Enterprise, BI4 SP05

Smart Guidelines is very popular

Online library of report templates allow for easier report design and not starting with a blank canvas.

Figure 6: Source: SAP

In BI4 you can consume new semantic layer to have a consistent story to connect

SAP added the query panel to build query similar to Web Intelligence.

It uses BICS layer to access BW, with SAP access to Hana and ECC.

Some customers do not want to go through the authored universe so SAP offers “Direct to data” such as – JDBC or ODBC connection (not through the Universe) to help transition from Crystal 2011 to Crystal Enterprise.

Figure 7: Source: SAP

BI4 SP05 can consume Crystal content via Mobile BI, interact with the content

HTML viewer allows for continuous scrolling, bread crumb navigation, and a new search panel

Figure 8: Source: SAP

Figure 8 shows the Insight to Action Report to Report Interface is what SAP customers requested.  You can link Crystal to application – invoke action from

Crystal content from HTML view – target doesn’t have to be Crystal – can be any SAP application that supports RRI.

Planned Innovations

Figure 9: Source: SAP

Planned Innovations mean planned features for 4.1, subject to change. 

Figure 9 shows with BI 4.1 you can use Freehand SQL commands while building Crystal Reports; this is important for report developers to optimize the SQL; this offers parity features with Crystal Reports 2011.

You can verify structure of report to data source change; you can verify the content and the metadata once the data source changes.

Modeled data means an authored universe, BEx query, MSAS OLAP connection – models that have been created; the new feature is the ability to create subreports based on modeled/unmodeled data.  Mike said you may run into performance issues depending on the modeling and the joins.

Figure 10: Source: SAP

For data sources, for 4.1, SAP wanted to focus on the performance and quality of solution for BW data sources. Mike said some customers struggled with performance of solution; functionally it gave more than Crystal 2011.

BI 4.1 contains cumulative fixes for Service Packs over 4.0 and added to 4.1

Figure 10 shows in the query panel you can define the relative depth of the hierarchy at report design time.

SAP ECC data sources offer optional parameters now via the universe.

Figure 11: Source: SAP

Figure 11 shows access to HANA; BI4 SP5 only had JDBC/ODBC support. 

Now with BI4.1 has access to OLAP with analytic and calculated views (hierarchy, currency conversions). Figure 11 on the right shows the query panel looks like accessing a Hana analytic view.  JDBC and ODBC can also use freehand SQL.  BI4 had SSO with Kerberos and now with BI4.1 SSO with SAML.

Figure 12: Source: SAP

Figure 12 shows an enhancement with OpenDoc  support with Mobile BI – open doc targets stay within Mobile BI

For the BI Launchpad, customers wanted different behavior in the Launchpad – today it views the latest instance.  BI4.1 administrator defines default action – refresh data source or latest instance.

For the developer, supports Opendoc POST requests to get around long URL requests.

Related product roadmaps can be found at service.sap.com/roadmap

Question & Answer:

Q:  Will there be any future enhancements to CR 2011 ?

  A:  Mainly new Platform support.

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Have there been any performance issues reported in relation to using Crystal reports against the ECC datasource. I hear that as a big concern from my Basis team.

  A:  CR 2011 can connect to ECC directly.  CR for Enterprise connects to ECC through a modelled UNX universe.  Do you know what version they are conceren about?

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Are processing extensions still supported?  We use View Time Security by APOS in BOE 3.1 with CR2008.

  A:  I believe so, but it would only be for CR 2011.  But it is best to double check with APOS that their solution is supported in 4.0.

________________________________________________________________

Q:  How easy is it to convert a 2011 report to CR Enterprise? If there is a Freehand SQL query in 2011, will it convert to CR Enterprise?

  A:  You would open up the report on CR Enterprise and then repoint the report's data source to a relational connection object.  That's all that is required.  A relational connection object is the new method to connect to data directly.

________________________________________________________________

Q:  From a performance point of view, isn't it good to have most of the things configured at Bex level rather than at CR4E ?

  A:  It is always a best practice to connect to a BEx query in BI4

________________________________________________________________

Q:  I'm confused about the numbering... CR2011 - is that CR4.0 and the upgrade is then to CR4.1?

  A:  There are 2 versions: Use Crystal for Enterprise with BI4 and Crystal 2011 can be used without BI4.

  A:  In the BI4.1 timeframe SAP is rebranding CR2011 to CR 2013 (standalone)

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Do you have ability to persist last selected parameter values in CR enetrprise and Crystal reports on a per user basis, similar to SAP Personalization.

  A:  Not yet.

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Can CR2011 be used in BI4?

  A:  Yes; you can publish CR2011 to BI4

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Can we connect to HANA using CR 2011 ?

  A:  Yes, via ODBC and JDBC.

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Is there a published list of crystal reports version differences?

  A:  There is a nice wiki on SCN comparing BI4 Crystal Enterprise and CR 2011.  Will try to find the link.

  A: http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/From+Crystal+Reports+2008+to+SAP+Crystal+Reports+2011+or+SAP+Crystal+Reports+for+Enterprise 

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Is direct connectivity to ECC planned for CR4E ? Or it should be through universe only

  A:  BI4 SP5 can talk to the ECC via the Universe via InfoSets/ABAP functions today

   A:  Via the CR4E

________________________________________________________________

Q:  What is the current status for dynamic cascading prompts?

  A:  no changes - LOV - do chunking; not greatly altered in 4.0

________________________________________________________________

Q:  In RRI, when we open SAP Transaction from a crystal report, does the transaction data come up in Crystal format or does it just open SAP transaction with original look and feel(SAP GUI/Web GUI format)?

  A:  I think that depends on how you set up the RRI on the backend via RSBB transaction

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Will SAP continue to support both CR 2011 and CR4E in future ?

  A:  Yes!

________________________________________________________________

Q:  any planned innovations for changing the semantic layer which is automatically created when you click on bex query as the data source

  A:  Please join the Semantic Layer 4.1 webcast on 3/12

________________________________________________________________

Q:  dynamic parameter still work in CR2011 or CR2013? using Business View Manager as well?

  A:  Yes, it continues to work as is

________________________________________________________________

Q:  What is the long-term migration plan for Business Views and Dynamic Parameters...? Will all of that functionality be moved to UNX at some point...?

  A:  In the plans; common semantic layer team is aware of this

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Crystal Report for enterprise 4.1 still require Universe or can directly to Oracle/sybase database as CR2011?

  A:  Universe or Direct to Data can be used

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Will 2008 CR run on BI 4.0 or do we have to ask report writers to upgrade to 2011?

A:  CR content created in CR2008 and published to XI3.x should seamlessly work in BI 4.0 once it is migrated.  However the designer should be upgraded to CR2011.

________________________________________________________________

Q:  Can we use sub-query in MDX, do you mean sub report as sub query . we wanted to filter a mdx query on another mdx query

A: The question is not very clear.  If this is referring to the Command object in Crystal Reports for Enterprise, then the answer is no.  The Command object is intended for SQL and not MDX.  Freehand SQL can be used to query the main report and the sub report in Crystal Reports.

My thanks to Henry Kam (who gave 3 ASUG webcasts just this past week) and Mike Seblani for supporting ASUG.

You can get hands-on experience with BI4.1 including Crystal Reports for Enterprise at ASUG Annual Conference Pre-conference session in May.  Register here.

Business Views

                                                           

If you have ever created a Crystal Report using the Hierarchical Grouping Options then you may have also wanted to create a cross-tab or chart using the same grouping order and hierarchy.

In later versions of Crystal, a HierarchyLevel function was added so that you could find the node of a particular group when using the Hierarchical Grouping Options. This function could be used for formatting objects (indenting, highlighting, etc.) but formulae referencing this function could not be used in charts or cross-tabs or group summaries as it was a print time function.

Recently one of our community members was trying to apply the same group order from his hierarchical data into a cross-tab and also apply some formatting to the cross-tab based on the group nodes.

Although there is no way to do this directly in a cross-tab or chart, there is a workaround. If a report uses a hierarchy, all of the information from the hierarchy (group levels, hierarchy nodes, parent groups) can be rolled up in a string running total and passed to a subreport. The subreport would be based on the same data as the main report and formulae can parse through this data and then be used in subreport objects such as cross-tabs, charts, group summaries, etc.

This may seem like a lot of work but my hope is that the attached sample report will help you out considerably. The sample report contains a bunch of formulae that do most of the work for you. The real work that you have to do is some copying and pasting and also editing some fields so that they use your data instead of the sample report's data. There is one main formula in the sample that takes your group and parent values and then rolls up all of the hierarchical information and this is passed to the subreport via a one-way subreport link. In the subreport, several more formulae look after parsing this data out to make it usable in your subreport objects. A lot of the formulae that are in the sample report do not have to be edited, so that makes things even easier.

There are instructions on the sample report's Report Header that will guide you through reusing the formulae and this technique on your report. To use the report, download the HiearchyFormula file attached to this blog and change the file extension from .txt to .rpt. If you get an error opening the file it is most likely because you are using an earlier version of Crystal Reports that does not support the HiearchyLevel function.

I hope that you find this tecnhique helpful. If you are looking for any other solutions or workarounds for Crystal Reports, please see my blog here in particular the content section.

In this blog I invite SAP Crystal Reports designers and Visual Studio .NET developers using SAP Crystal Reports, SAP Crystal Reports Application Server and Business Objects Enterprise (BI) Solution Developer Kits (SDK) to follow us on twitter. I also provide a bit of an explanation, purpose and history of SAP twitter channels for report designers and for Visual Studio .NET developers.

Report designers using SAP Crystal Reports follows us at SAPCRDes.

Visual Studio .NET developers using SAP Crystal Reports, SAP Crystal Reports Application Server and Business Objects Enterprise (BI) SDKs follow us at SAPCRNETSup.

I believe that freely sharing technical knowledge with the users of any software is the only scalable solution that enables the user to learn, to solve and to resolve issues with their software. And in these days of Social Media, that scaling is pretty well infinite. In the very first days of Windows applications knowledge sharing was limited to technical manuals, books and phones. Scaling up, meant hiring more people, using faxes and occasionally loading a file or two on Bulletin Boards. It was not until the age of the internet that real scaling became possible with freely available blogs, Knowledge Bases, wikis and other content, efficient searching notwithstanding…

Through this evolution I was always interested in better ways of sharing; Would it not be great to let a customer know about a new piece of knowledge the minute it was created? I kicked around ideas such as locally updatable apps, emails announcing new knowledge to subscribing customers and so on. Unfortunately as often happens, due to the efforts needed to implement such initiatives the ideas remained… well, ideas. Finally, with Social Media and particularly channels such as Twitter and Facebook, the idea of pushing knowledge out to customers who wanted it became possible with relatively low effort. On December 7, 2009, the SAP .NET Developer support team for Crystal Reports, Report Application Server and Business Objects Enterprise launched the twitter channel; SAPCRNETSup. The intent of this initiative was to share knowledge as soon as we were able to publish it. Since then we have tweeted over 990 pieces of information; KBAs, articles, blogs, wikis and more. The channel now has over 400 followers and more are joining every week. Following on the success of the SAPCRNETSup twitter channel, the SAP Crystal Reports Design and Database connectivity launched it’s own SAPCRDes twitter channel on July 17, 2012.

While the two twitter channels may appear to be redundant, the idea is that Visual Studio .NET developers using SAP Crystal Reports, SAP Crystal Reports Application Server and Business Objects Enterprise (BI) are interested in very different information than designers of actual reports. Each twitter channel is specifically targeting these two types of users with information specific to their interests. The channels are not technical support. This would be a difficult task in under 140 characters. Rather, they are a way of sharing information. If you are looking for timely information, join us; SAPCRDes, SAPCRNETSup.

For more SAP Technical Support channels see SAP Twitter Feeds for Techies

Yesterday I responded to a discussion seeking help to replace numbers with asterisks.

While I think my suggestion to loop through the string of data one character at a time replacing each character with an asterisk if it is a number will work I kept thinking that it could be improved.  I am certain the code I provided could be better, but it seemed to me that a whole different approach using a regular expression would be even better.

What I am going to suggest here requires some basic C# programming skills (which I have, but are rusty from lack of use) and control of your database (or at least a helpful DBA).

About six weeks ago my manager (and helpful DBA) asked me to help him create a CLR-based, user-defined function to assist in analyzing SQL Server 2008 trace data.  He had found a CLR function created by Itzik Ben-Gan and detailed in his book Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying.  Fortunately I had a copy of that very book updated for SQL Server 2008 on my desk to guide me through the details (pages 160 -162).

So my first step was to create a C# class library project.  I used Visual Studio 2010 and compiled my code targeting .NET 3.5 since the was the newest version of the .NET framework that was on the SQL Server to which were going to be deploying this function.

Here is entirety of the code taken directly from Ben-Gan's book...

using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;

using System.Data.SqlTypes;

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public partial class RegExp

{

    [SqlFunction(IsDeterministic = true, DataAccess = DataAccessKind.None)]

    public static SqlString RegexReplace(SqlString input, SqlString pattern, SqlString replacement)

    {

        return (SqlString)Regex.Replace(input.Value, pattern.Value, replacement.Value);

    }

}

Proceeding to follow the steps laid out in the book you have to enable CLR on your SQL Server, load the IL code and register the RegexReplace function.  That all worked like a charm.  My manager got what he needed and we forgot about it.

Then I came across the discussion mentioned above and wondered if I could use that RegexReplace function when using a command object in Crystal Reports.  You sure can.

For the purposes of this example I created a global temporary table and inserted 3 rows as follows...

CREATE TABLE ##MyTable (ID INT, Column1 VARCHAR(50))

INSERT INTO ##MyTable (ID, Column1) VALUES (1, 'Some data $12,345.78')

INSERT INTO ##MyTable (ID, Column1) VALUES (2, 'Some other data 01/31/2013')

INSERT INTO ##MyTable (ID, Column1) VALUES (3, '123 Main Ave. - Apt #2B')

I then created a Crystal Report based on a command object and used my RegexReplace function.

And here are the results.

I am not a regular expression expert; there are plenty of other in-depth resources elsewhere.  My only intent was to show this was possible, not to incorporate comprehensive regular expression support into Crystal Reports.  If you would like to see that, vote for my idea.

Please understand that I did this as a proof-of-concept.  I don't have a need for this right now, but since I figured this much out I thought I would share it and perhaps this could be a building block for something for someone else.  The C# code could be enhanced to expose more regular expression  functionality or perhaps you could implement something totally different  that can be done in C#, but not in SQL Server or Crystal Reports.

Enjoy,

Noel

I've always thought that Service Packs for any product were a way of fixing bugs in software after release. If a software company wanted to introduce new features, they waited until the next full or point release. When I install software, I always patch to the latest Service Pack. I normally leave any in-between patches as they can introduce more problems than they solve due to less testing.

Following installation, unless a customer had a specific problem, I would always advise not to apply a new Service Pack. The thinking being that there's no point fixing ten bugs that aren't causing any problems, then introducing one new bug that breaks something important. The exception to all this has been security or compatibility fixes in a Service Pack, but they're normally solved at the operating system or application server level.

Looks like I need to change my recommendations!

Last year (2012) there were some major changes in functionality for the Crystal products introduced through Service Packs. SAP have justified this by renaming Service Pack to Minor Release but as the installer still says Service Pack, it looks like marketing have been getting involved rather than there being any technical change.

Let's take a quick look:

Crystal Server 2011 was released at Service Pack 2. Bit of an oddity, but due to being the same platform as Business Objects Enterprise. I seem to have missed Service Pack 3 (they were released thick and fast), but Service Pack 4 fixed a lot of the problems with the migration wizard. More importantly for the purpose of this post, the add-on for Mobile Solutions was made available. This had previously been available for the higher products, but not for Crystal Server. Dreadful name for the add-0n, but just meant you could use a native app for the iPad to access your Crystal Reports. This first release was very basic, just rendering an image of the report with none of the interactivity you expect with a Crystal Report.

This lack of interactivity was fixed with the introduction of Service Pack 5. Now I can start to get excited about the iPad app as it supports drill-down, interactive parameters, search and has a proper group tree. There's no longer a need to send complicated opendoc links to users.  Sadly, none of this has been extended to Android users yet. The current mobile solution of Android doesn't support Crystal Reports at all. I'm sure it's on the way, let's just wait for Service Pack 6 or 7!  On another note, if you do decide to install a Service Pack on Crystal Server, make sure you have all your custom configuration files saved somewhere safe. They disappear when the application is redeployed to Tomcat.

Crystal Dashboard (neé Xcelsius) had some mobile functionality added recently too. It seems strange that when I first started selling Xcelsius, its big selling point was the as it was flash based, most client computers could be used to view the dashboards! This all changed with the introduction of the iPad which is lacking flash. There are two options for application developers now - HTML 5 or a native application. I'm glad to say that SAP have gone for HTML 5 which will hopefully avoid all the issues of different functionality between platforms.

We're not quite there yet - when you save a dashboard to Crystal Server, you have the option to 'Save for mobile'. There are currently two caveats. The first is that not all the widgets are available, so some just won't render. The second is that not all data access options are supported. I'm frustrated that Web Services aren't there as it prevents use of the excellent Flynet. I guess that will be introduced in the future.

Crystal Reports for Enterprise Despite my initial reservations this product is rapidly improving. Graph support when you upgrade an existing rpt file is a bit odd, but other than that, I'm getting happier with every Service Pack. Native connections to databases (the important ones) has been around for a while now. The best bit about the native connections is that they're stored centrally when you save the report to Crystal Server. That means that when you change your database password or connection information, you only have one connection to edit rather than every report.  I still wouldn't recommend dropping Crystal Reports 2011 yet (could we call it Crystal Classic?), but I think it's worth examining Crystal Reports for Enterprise ready for the next release.

Crystal Reports 2011. Sorry to get you excited, but there's nothing going on here. Yes, we're up to Service Pack 5, but it's just bug fixes as far as I'm aware. I've no doubt I'll still be writing Crystal Reports in 5 years (that'll make 22 years of Crystal Reports for me), but we should all be preparing for the new kid on the block - Crystal Reports for Enterprise.

Where are they then? I had a strange discussion with my account manager the other day as I was struggling to find the Service Packs for Crystal Reports 2011. The initial response was that you had to buy an upgrade to get the latest Service Pack. Seemed a bit extreme given how frequently they're being released, and how minor some of the changes are, so I persevered.

The Crystal 2008 Service Packs are available for download at http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-27917

Crystal 2011 from here: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-28273

Crystal Dashboard is in there somewhere too.

For Crystal Server, you need to have a current support contract, then download from support .

Needless to say, if you're struggling with this, and you're a customer of mine, just give me a call and I'll sort it out for you.

To end, a big thank you to whoever was reading my blog on Christmas Day. I salute your dedication to all things Crystal. There was also a lone reader on New Year's Day. Possibly an accident induced by a hangover, but thanks anyway.

Happy New Year!

在跨國企業裡，一套資訊系統可能會有許多不同國家的使用者在使用，所以系統介面的多語是相當常見的，同樣地也有一些資訊是不同國家的使用者都想要關心的，這些資訊可能都在同一份報表中，為各地不同使用者而開發多份不同語文的報表版本，除了線性的開發成本增加外，另外也可能因不同版本報表，造成的溝通成本增加及決策延誤，報表的內容其實都是相同的，只是需要用不同的語系來說明這些資訊的意義，報表的多語應用就是為了節省這些成本而存在。

資訊系統的多語介面使用非常廣泛

在Crystal Reports我們可以使用User Function Library (UFL)，根據地區語系查閱外部檔案中不同語系的顯示值來達到多語的效果，這些UFL可以被用在Crystal Reports 2008和BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1的使用情境，首先我們要先下載幾個檔案，其中有兩個dll檔案：u212samp.dll和xerces-c_3_0.dll，將其置放在安裝Crystal Reports designer或BusinessObjects Enterprise主機的下列路徑資料夾內：C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86 (64-bit環境為Program Files (x86))，取代原有的dll檔案。

然後在C:\ProgramData路徑下 (Windows 2003/XP為C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data)建立一個名稱為LocalLookup的子資料夾，將下載檔案中的lookup.xml檔案置放在此資料夾內，就完成了相關的設定。

接著我們來研究lookup.xml檔案的內容，編輯檔案後可見基本架構如下：

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<localizations xmlns:dt="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:datatypes">

  <key value="CountryTitle">

    <localization locale="zh_TW">國家</localization>

    <localization locale="en_US">Country</localization>

    <localization locale="ja_JP">国家</localization>

  </key>

  <key value="RevenuesTitle">

    <localization locale="zh_TW">銷售金額</localization>

    <localization locale="en_US">Revenues</localization>

    <localization locale="ja_JP">販売の金額</localization>

  </key>

</localizations>

        其中的key標籤，就是決定要用多語顯示的關鍵字及顯示值，當我們在這個xml檔案中維護了這些資訊後，就可以在Crystal Reports designer建立公式欄位，公式為Lookup(lookup.xml檔案中的關鍵字, ContentLocale)，使用這個公式之後Crystal Reports就會依據關鍵字找到xml檔案中對應的標籤，再由開啟報表的client機器是何地區語系來決定要傳回哪個顯示值。

以上面的標籤內容為例，我們在一份報表的銷售金額上放一個公式欄位為Lookup("RevenuesTitle", ContentLocale)，此時若client機器的地區語系是中文(台灣)會顯示”銷售金額”；若是英文(美國)就會顯示” Revenues”；日文(日本)則是” 販売の金額”，下面是一張實作多語的報表在不同地區語系的client開啟的差異：

中文(台灣)

英文(美國)

日文(日本)

          下個世代的Crystal Reports是Crystal Reports 2011及Crystal Reports for Enterprise，Crystal Reports for Enterprise使用語意層為資料來源，多語的實作也同Web Intelligence報表使用Translation Manager。透過多語的實作，來自世界各地不同國家的使用者不只可以用自己熟悉的語言使用資訊系統，還可以用自己熟悉的語言快速獲得報表中的資訊，更重要的是，報表製作人員不再需要把報表每一種語言重新製作一次，因此可以省下大量的時間人力成本。