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Crystal Reports 2008
by: Kristen St. Jean, Sr. BI Consultant, CRCP
There are quite a few new and exciting features in the
latest release of Crystal Reports – Crystal Reports 2008.
However, before we get into discussing these new features, I want to make
sure that everyone is aware that the new features will be ignored in Business
Objects Enterprise and Crystal Reports Server until sometime in 2008 when an
upgrade is provided for these servers.
Along these lines, Crystal Reports 2008 Designer cannot log on to either
of these servers, so if you are using Business Objects Enterprise or Crystal
Reports Server, you may want to wait until the servers can be updated before you
begin using Crystal Reports 2008.
Now that we know what we can’t do at the moment with Crystal Reports 2008, let’s
talk about the new features that have been introduced!
One new feature is interactive viewing.
This is a long-anticipated feature that allows users to change the way
the report is sorted or choose different parameter values while viewing the
report without having to refresh the report against the database.
Now, we can give our users more choices without having to give them
access to constantly run the reports against the database.
Not only can parameters be changed at view time now, but as
a report designer you can define a parameter as optional, and if it is not
populated then it will be ignored by the report.
I know that there are a lot of people out there that will appreciate this
functionality!
One of the most exciting new features, in my opinion, is
the integration of SWF files.
Instead of creating complicated programming to embed SWF files into a report,
you can now import Adobe Flash files with the click of a button!
This makes it very easy to incorporate dynamic, interactive
visualizations created in Crystal Xceslius into reports.
Several other features have been added also, the following
are just a few of them. Crosstabs
have been enhanced to allow much more flexibility. Now, instead of having a
basic column, row, summary, structure; you can create custom calculations to
calculate specific data in your crosstab.
To enhance viewing over the web, pages can now be broken by a certain
number of records, and portrait and landscape pages can exist together in the
same report! There are new drivers
for Web Services and an integrated Salesforce.com driver so that report
designers can connect quickly and easily to data if they have these services
available to them. Reports can be
saved directly from the Crystal Reports 2008 designer into crystalreports.com to
be easily shared via the web.
These are just several of the enhancements that you will
find when using Crystal Reports 2008.
Have fun incorporating these new features into your reports!
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