SAP Functions in Detail Crystal Reports Server CRYSTAL REPORTS® SERVER A FUNCTIONAL OVERVIEW Crystal Reports® Server software offers user-friendly features and tools to simplify your work when you manage reports and dashboards. Crystal Reports Server harnesses the same platform as SAP® BusinessObjects™ Enterprise software to offer small businesses and midsize companies a proven reporting and dashboard solution on a single server.
CONTENT 3 Disclaimer 4 Functional Overview 5 5 6 12 14 14 14 Functional Architecture User-Interaction Tier Report Viewers for Viewing, Printing, and Exporting Microsoft Office with SAP BusinessObjects Live Office Web and Application Developer Services Developer Interfaces Services for Microsoft .
Functional Overview Complete Reporting and Dashboard Management Solution Crystal Reports Server offers user-friendly and powerful features and tools to simplify your work when you manage reports. 4 Crystal Reports® Server software offers small businesses and midsize companies a proven reporting and dashboard solution on a single server.
Functional Architecture Optimized Components, Services, and End-User Tools Crystal Reports Server is composed of separate yet interconnected com ponents and services optimized for specific tasks (see Figure 1).
Report Viewers for Viewing, Printing, and Exporting Within the end-user portal, you can select your preferred viewer from a choice of thin- and zero-client report viewers: dynamic HTML (DHTML), ActiveX viewer, and Java applet. These viewers provide end users with simple report-viewing and interaction functions, including report refreshing, printing, exporting, and searching. The portal and the report viewers are simple, straightforward, and designed to be used by your end users with minimal training.
servers, including Microsoft IIS, BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Apache, Oracle10g application server, or Sun ONE. The SDKs provide a high-level application programming interface (API) so that you can use the development language you prefer to control every aspect of Crystal Reports Server. The components process requests from users in the user-interaction tier and then communicate these requests to the appropriate service in the infrastructure tier.
You can use robust security options for user, group, object, and folder levels to give the right people access to the right infor mation at the right time. Management Tools You can use robust security options for user, group, object, and folder levels to give the right people access to the right information at the right time.
Central Configuration Manager A central configuration manager is designed exclusively for the server management and configuration of the Crystal Reports Server services. This tool allows you to start, stop, enable, and disable servers; you can also view and configure advanced server settings. Infrastructure Services Based on the proven SOA of SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise, Crystal Reports Server represents the services where actual data processing, document processing, and end-user access take place.
Figure 7: Central Management Console Scheduling Window System Management The central management server is a key service responsible for maintaining a database of information about Crystal Reports Server. Data in the central management server includes information on users and groups, security levels, and reports. This information is used to enforce access rights to Crystal Reports Server and the types of tasks users can perform.
Figure 8: Publishing to a List of Dynamic Recipients Processing and Caching Crystal Reports Server supports efficient report processing through the page server. The page server is primarily responsible for responding to page requests by processing reports and generating them as needed. Only the requested page is returned, not the entire report. This greatly enhances performance and reduces unnecessary network traffic for large reports. applications, and database.
Figure 9: The Publishing Wizard Report and Dashboard Creation Crystal Reports Server lets you view, share, and manage the reports designed in Crystal Reports and also dashboards designed in Xcelsius software. Crystal Reports is a powerful tool built to address diverse data formatting and presentation requirements. For novice report designers, Crystal Reports includes intuitive wizards, templates, and experts to simplify common reporting tasks.
Simple and straightforward end-user portal and report viewers provide end users with immediate access to information with minimal training. A simple and straightforward portal provides end users with immediate access to information with minimal training. A parameter panel (see Figure 10) means that parameter values can be set without refreshing data. Report consumers can view the parameters displayed in the panel, change them, and have the new values applied directly to the saved data in the report.
Gain peace of mind with a solution ready for migration at any time to more com prehensive business intelligence solutions such as SAP BusinessObjects Edge solutions and SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise software. Figure 11: Comprehensive Data Source Access in Crystal Reports® Data Services The Crystal Reports report designer provides a variety of flexible dataconnectivity options.
Conclusion A Complete Report and Dashboard Management Solution Crystal Reports Server is a complete reporting and dashboard management solution that helps small businesses and midsize companies create, manage, and securely deliver reports and visualizations. It is built using the proven and trusted SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise software, providing a powerful service-oriented architecture.
Quick Facts www.sap.com /contactsap Summary Powered by the same platform as SAP® BusinessObjects™ Enterprise software, Crystal Reports® Server software is a complete report and dashboard management solution that meets the needs of small businesses and midsize companies. The software enables organizations to securely open, view, interact with, and share interactive reports and dashboards over the Web, in e-mail, and in Microsoft Office documents.
