Business Objects' Crystal Reports Professional

New Features

CR Professional lets you create hierarchical data groupings for easier navigation through reports. The company has improved integration with its Enterprise Repository and added programmer-set prompts so users can choose from a data source rather than rely on static prompt values.

If you publish reports to the Web, you'll find the new HTML preview function invaluable. Unfortunately, you can't publish directly to a Web server over WebDAV or FTP. And reports exported to HTML and PDF still lose all their interactive features, such as hierarchical grouping navigation and drill-down functions.

Sift, Shift, Lift

Business Objects sent me a copy of Professional XI to test at the RSM Experts lab in Montreal. Installation was wizard-guided and led to the Start page. From here, I could customize one of 30 standard reports, or create my own report using a blank design page or one of four report-creation wizards. The Start page provides a list of recently opened reports, as well as links to online resources and product-support features.CR Professional supports most database types, from file-based data sources, such as Excel and Web server log files, to relational and application-specific data sources like OBDC, ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) files. It also includes updated JDBC (Java Database Connectivity), DB2 and XML Web services data drivers. Data connectors for less common data sources--such as ACT! 3.0, NT Event Logs, Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange--install on demand.

To create my first report, I used the standard report wizard and defined my data sources using the included Database Expert. This let me access an existing system DSN to create a connection to a Microsoft SQL database hosted at Network Computing's Real-World Labs®, with sales order and product information tables for NWC Inc. on it. I also accessed an Excel spreadsheet with employee information (for example, name, ID, position and assigned territories) for sales reps.

I connected to my SQL and Excel data sources using the wizard's intuitive graphical data-linker applet. Then I created a link within my report by dragging the "Employee ID" field from my "Orders" table contained in the SQL data source to the "Employee Number" field in the Excel spreadsheet. Next, I selected the fields from the "Orders" table that I wanted to appear in my final report--territory, customer name, order value and sales rep name.

Top to Bottom

A new feature lets you organize and name different views. For my sales report, I grouped the data by territory, then by city. For the grouping summary, I had the wizard calculate the order value totals for each territory and count the orders per city. Then I had it filter out all orders less than $500. Not a single formula or query statement was needed.

My selected fields were put in the layout and design page automatically. In addition to the standard headers and footers, each grouping within a report got its own header and footer section, which made it confusing to decide where particular fields should go. This is the least intuitive aspect of the product.The report layout's shortcomings are balanced by the new HTML preview option, which displayed how my report would look on the Web. I could modify the look of my report by making attribute changes (such as alignment, font, style and color) using the standard word-processing format controls from the toolbar.

Bigger Picture

With CR Professional XI, report processing is restricted to the computer on which the program is installed. And you can't schedule the creation of reports unless you buy Enterprise Repository. If those limitations will affect the usefulness of CR for you or if you need to implement user and object security, consider the more expensive Crystal Reports Server XI.

Still, documentation is excellent. The help is ubiquitous and informative, and the User's Guide is written in plain English suitable for both nontechnical business users and database gurus. If you have other Business Objects XI components deployed, if you frequently publish reports to the Web or if you need to store user prompt options in a database instead of in a report, consider upgrading to CR Professional XI.

Daniel Koffler is president of RSM Experts and author of several open-source projects. Write to him at [email protected].0