What does the landscape and horizon look like for Crystal Reports ?

[Former Member]

We are implementing BI Suite in the next several months or so. I was asked to look into Crystal Reports, of which I have passing but credible knowledge of. I've also been using Web Intelligence for ~6 months, so have a pretty good idea of its features and capabilities.

Dave Rathbun has a nice write-up of .UNX vs .UNV (from 2013), which touches on Crystal for Enterprise and Crystal Reports (2013 ?). In particular, his article says Crystal for Enterprise ONLY works with the (new) .UNX universes (which uses the new Info Design Tool), and Crystal Reports does NOT work with the (new) .UNX universes and only has LIMITED support with the (older) .UNV universes.

On other blogs, I just didn't get the warm and fuzzy on Cyrstal, for various reasons, but primarily these:

- Crystal for Enterprise is fairly new and not nearly as stable as Crystal Reports (2013?)

- Crystal Reports is stable but doesn't work with the (newer) .UNX universes

The other blog articles were also written in 2013, so I didn't see anything newer.

So - - -

- can I NOT use Crystal for Enterprise with the (older) .UNV universes ?

- Is Crystal Reports (2013?) going to work with both .UNV and .UNX universes ? and for the long term ?

With our BI Suite implementation, we are planning on just going with what we have - .UNV universes and the (older) Universe Design Tool. But we have some critical needs that cannot be addressed by Web Intelligence. And we of course want to make a good (i.e., long-term) investment in bringing in Crystal as our high-end reporting tool.

Also, I looked at this SAP post which didn't give me the warm and fuzzies regarding Crystal, specifically "But whereas Crystal Reports 2011 runs stable the same way as it did for the last decade, the new Crystal Reports for Enterprise is just crap compared to both, the legacy CR and Webi."

I'm only looking for discussion on Crystal, not any alternatives.

[nscheaffer · Accepted solution]

I get your concerns and don't have any silver bullet advice for you. We use Web Intelligence for data for which we have a universe and Crystal Reports 2013 for data for which we don't have a universe. That reason is being eroded with the re-introduction of Free-hand SQL (FHSQL) into Web Intelligence.

What are your critical needs that seem like they cannot be addresses by Web Intelligence? Perhaps there are some ways to work around them.

Noel

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Noel,

thanks for the reply. We just have several reports for which we've run out of "WebI" tricks to make them work (well). One has "pixel perfect" requirements and it's become a mess of tricks with no end in sight to "special situations". I know others say "there's no report that I cannot do in Web I", but this seems to be the one (that we can't do). This is from a very experienced developer.

When I posted this, I had kind of forgotten about the direct connection of Crystal to the d.b. I think Web I is great. Having not worked in Crystal for a good long time, I can't really comment on the technical side of things, but I don't see the value of using Crystal with a Universe - just use Web I. If it's to allow users to use Crystal, that seems kind of crazy.

[nscheaffer · Accepted solution]

Sorry, I missed the last sentence about wanting to focus the discussion on Crystal.

This blog post from about 18 months ago says that Crystal Reports is not going away.

http://blogs.sap.com/analytics/2014/06/25/run-simple-convergence-of-the-sap-businessobjects-bi-produ...

However, it doesn't really make a distinction between the traditional Crystal Reports and Crystal Reports For Enterprise (CR4E).

Personally, I found CR4E a bit difficult to use on a couple items (not sure I even remember what they were) and since we had Crystal Reports 2013 and what I wanted to do was working there I just stuck with that.

Noel

[nscheaffer · Accepted solution]

If "pixel perfect" is what you need then Crystal is definitely the way to go. Support for traditional Crystal Reports should be around for a good long time. If ever SAP decides to fold all their Crystal eggs into the CR4E basket they had better make CR4E is rock solid and have a very good migration path.

Noel

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Noel,

thanks again. The link was very helpful.