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Crystal Reports 2008 is a powerful, dynamic, actionable reporting solution that helps you design, explore, visualize, and deliver reports via the web or embedded in enterprise applications. It enables end users to consume reports with stunning visualizations, conduct on-report business modeling, and execute decisions instantly from the report itself reducing dependency on IT and developers.
A new kind of reporting solution that transforms data into actionable information
One that enables more informed decisions, instantly.
One that helps you respond to changes easily and knowledgeably.
One that ensures that you and your colleagues are more productive, more competitive.
Crystal Reports 2008 is a powerful, dynamic, actionable reporting solution that helps you design, explore, visualize, and deliver reports via the web or embedded in enterprise applications. It enables end users to consume reports with stunning visualizations, conduct on-report business modeling, and execute decisions instantly from the report itself - reducing dependency on IT and developers.
Advanced information visualisation capability
Improved end-user viewing experience
Enhanced report designer productivity
New flexible deployment options
Flexible application integration
A more streamlined and flexible report designer.
Recommended for report designers, IT professionals, DBAs, power users and application developers.
Features
Interactive report viewing experience: End users can sort, filter and reformat reports dynamically within the report viewers (supported in the .NET Webform and .NET Winform), all without forcing a database refresh - and answer more business questions with fewer report files.
On-report scenario modelling: Access a powerful, dynamic decision support tool when you integrate SWF content files from Xcelsius (not included) into your Crystal Reports web applications.
Operational reporting: Make your reports actionable by integrating FlexBuilder applications that provide business-user UI widgets to perform tasks such as database write-back and workflow integration.
Report design: Use the visual report designer for rapid data access and creation of highly formatted reports. New crosstab formulas reduce report design time by supporting customer calculations for rows and columns.
Application integration: Crystal Reports 2008 for Visual Studio (included) makes it easy to add reports to your application. You can drag and drop viewer components into your .NET Winform or Webform projects and use the SDKs to control report viewing, printing, exporting, plus programming report creation and modification. Deploy your application with the Crystal Reports 2008 runtime using either merge modules (MSMs) or a separate standalone MSI setup file.
Free runtime licensing: You will not have to pay additional licensing fees for multiple servers or CPUs with the royalty-free runtime licence for unlimited internal corporate deployment of the Crystal Reports .NET report engine components.
Single edition: Crystal Reports 2008 comes in a single edition that meets the broadest range of user and application requirements. It replaces three Crystal Reports XI editions: Standard, Professional and Developer.
Features and Functionality
INTEGRATE
Xcelsius Integration
Visualize the potential outcome of your business decisions with what-if scenario models built in your report file. Import Xcelsius-generated SWF files into your report and benefit from improved design-time integration. IT and developers will design fewer reports to support the decision making process. Please note: Xcelsius design tool is not included in Crystal Reports 2008.
Adobe Flex Integration
Execute business decisions from within the report file. Integrate your reports with operational workflows by embedding Adobe Flex (SWF) applications into your reports. Using Adobe Flex Builder you can create any business-user UI to access report data and integrate with external web services. Data in your report can be passed to the Flex application via Flashvars, making it easy to create a flexible UI even when you don't have access to your data via web services. The Flex applications can do tasks like database write-back - invoking operational workflows directly within Crystal Reports. IT and Developers benefit from instant, coding-free integration of Crystal Reports with your business processes. Please note: Adobe Flex Builder is not included in Crystal Reports 2008.
Parameter Panel
The report designer and the .NET Winform, and .NET Webform viewers have a parameter panel so that parameter values can be set without refreshing data. Parameters used are displayed on the panel so that report consumers can easily see them, make changes, and have the new values applied directly to the saved data. Another solution to reduce report count and IT/Dev support cost.
Interactive Report Viewing
Users can answer more business questions with fewer, more flexible reports – significantly reducing Developer and IT support dependency. On-report sorting, filtering, and report reformatting with the .NET Winform, and .NET Webform viewers allows users to explore information interactively without re-querying the database. New optional parameters provide for complex user-driven filtering scenarios.
VISUALISE
Adobe Flash Integration
Create stunning visualizations by adding dynamic charts, graphics and even video files to your reports. A wide variety of flexible data presentation options are now available through Flash. Flash (SWF) files can be integrated into your report and report data can be shared with SWF via Flashvars for compelling, interactive, and information-rich reports. The SWF files can quickly be embedded in the report or linked via a website saving IT and Development time.
Powerful Crosstabs
Add business-critical information to your reports without coding. Summary, variance, and any other customer calculations can be inserted into a crosstab row or a column – especially useful for reports that benefit from a table structure such as financial reports. The crosstab table structure makes reports much faster to build and maintain. This feature also provides powerful benefits to crosstab-based charts since custom formulas in the crosstab can be visualized within the charts.
Flexible Pagination
Facilitate better online report viewing to your end users. Report designers can customize page size and easily control page breaking after N records/groups. A single report can combine portrait and landscape oriented pages and the white space at the end of groups can be removed by compressing the page footers. Online report consumption is improved because reports are easier to read.
DESIGN
Xcelsius, Adobe Flex, and Adobe Flash Integration
Crystal Reports developers have now the ability to produce powerful mashups pulling data from various sources. They can easily integrate components designed in Flash and Flex without any coding, and significantly expand the scope of their application deployment. Please note: Access to commercial third party flash components like ESRI ArcWeb Services as shown in the demonstration is not included in Crystal Reports 2008.
Enhanced Web Services Data Driver
Expand your access to data over the web. Integration with various web services can be difficult and complex due to a wide variety of implementation types. The new data driver offers additional web access to web services by providing support for RPC encoding of SOAP messages, SSL-secured web servers, as well as a working compatibility with the WS-Security standard. It adapts to custom logon requirements such as email addresses or user/password. Developers can combine the flexibility of XML and Web Services with report formatting and visualization to deliver reports linking report data to sophisticated interactive data mashups such as integration with third party mapping systems.
Built-in Barcode Support
Save design time and reduce your cost. Generate barcodes with only a few clicks of the mouse by using the new 'turn to barcode' function in the context menu. Easily convert fields to Code39 barcodes without any coding or extra steps. Additional barcode fonts are available from third-party vendors.
Enhanced Designer Features
Report designer will be more productive with features like global formula search, duplicate formula, duplicate running total, auto complete field names, and the Find in Field Explorer feature.
Single Edition
A simple solution for all your design needs. Crystal Reports 2008 comes in a single edition that is the feature equivalent of the previous Developer Edition. This single offering provides customers with quick access to the features they need to meet any application and user requirement. Report samples and developer documentation are now a free, optional download.
Multilingual Reporting
Provides flexible implementation. Choose the working language you prefer by simply selecting the language packs you wish to use during product installation. Then switch the report designer UI to use any of the installed language packs. The report content locale can also be explicitly set for each report file. This setting controls sorting, grouping and formatting that matches the local language customs and conventions.
Reduced Install Footprint
The download size has been reduced to 300MB to provide fast access via the download site. The runtime files included in developer applications are also significantly smaller.
DEPLOY
Save reports directly to crystalreports.com
Expand your deployment options with on-demand reporting capabilities when you open and save reports directly to crystalreports.com. This new integration allows you to manage and share your reports securely without dependency on IT.
Integrated SalesForce.com Driver
The salesforce.com driver included with Crystal Reports 2008 allows for easy access to complete customer data - turning it into actionable business information. Reports that use a salesforce.com driver will refresh when deployed to crystalreports.com.
Improved XML Exporting
Render reports in almost any format and enjoy faster and easier integration with your industry-specific business processes - without any custom coding. The XSLT transformations are embedded into the report file and will be triggered by users from within the viewer when exporting to XML. This provides a powerful, flexible hook for transforming Crystal Reports data and integrating it into other applications.
NET Report Modification SDK
The Report Application Server SDK is now available for users of CR.NET API without the use of a RAS server. Report modification such as changing / adding / removing database providers, adding / removing / creating report objects, parameters, formulas, and sections can be achieved by accessing the RAS SDK through the CR .NET SDK. |
