Product Reviews

Crystal Reports creates structured reports from databases by selecting fields from source data and grouping them appropriately. Reports can include calculations, such as totalling the items in each group and graphing numeric data. Once the structure of a report is complete, the final document may be distributed over the Web or embedded into other documents and applications.

Beyond the basic reporting tools included in products such as Microsoft Access, Crystal Reports enables you to use multiple data sources in different database formats. This makes it well suited to large businesses that need to analyse complex data for business intelligence tasks.

Version 9 brings with it additional tools for web-based reporting as well as a repository feature and improved template controls. Usability is also better than in previous releases, but this is still a tool for technically adept users.

One of the product's traditional strengths has been the array of data types it supports, with version 9 increasing the list to over 30. These range from desktop data sources such as Microsoft Access and Paradox to enterprise-level products including Oracle, SQL Server and DB2. To complete the range of features, XML and OLAP tools are also provided, but the omission of support for FileMaker is a surprising and inexcusable exception.

This release adds tools for building connectors to custom database formats using JavaBeans, COM or ADO .NET. There's also support for thread-safe database drivers, enabling simultaneous updates to data in a report even if it's from multiple sources. For web-based reporting, this provides faster update times and a more consistent display of information. Support for Unicode is also introduced, allowing for data stored in most languages to be accessed by the product, as well as data in multiple languages combined within a single report.

The new repository feature is welcome, providing a means of reusing report components. SQL commands, images and text objects can now be stored centrally and made available to all Crystal Reports 9 users. As a result, complex SQL commands now need only to be built once and reused in future reports. To some extent, this simplifies an otherwise overly complex program, as SQL coding can be done by a database expert with the end results made available to less technical users. On this note, support for SQL commands has also been extended, including the ability to create unions between tables and execute subselects. It's also possible to add input parameters to commands and store them with the relevant SQL code in the repository.

The repository can also be used to store frequently used images and blocks of text, such as contact details, as well as formulae for carrying out actions on report data. As with SQL commands, you're able to amend the content of a text or image object within a report and re-save it to the repository either as a separate entity or as an update to an existing item. However, it isn't possible to 'lock' individual objects to prevent them from being edited.

A selection of predefined functions covering date, financial, formatting and mathematical calculations are supplied as part of the product, but a new Function Workshop is also included for creating custom code. This is an improvement over the Formula Expert found in previous versions of Crystal Reports and also provides a Wizard-style interface for less experienced users.

Previous versions of Crystal Reports were cursed with cumbersome tools for report formatting. This release includes a new Custom Templates feature, which at least provides the ability to reuse a design once it's been created.

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Templates may include graph conversion features - a means of quickly converting numerical tables into more visual formats - as well as formatting. Multiple templates can be applied to a single report, so layouts and graphics from different sources may be combined to produce new designs.

However, structuring and formatting a report in the first place is still awkward. For example, there's no option to automatically adjust a report's layout when new elements such as formula fields or text objects are added. As a result, getting layouts correct is still time-consuming and fiddly, making the new template reuse features all the more welcome.

A Template Expert manages completed templates. It includes a browse function for finding and applying Crystal Reports templates stored anywhere on a local drive or network. There's also a set of ten default templates included with the product, although few of these are genuinely usable. Existing reports can also be saved as templates, including files from earlier versions of Crystal Reports.

Crystal Reports 9 is one of the few applications to have embraced the Smart Tags functionality included in Microsoft's Office XP. Smart Tags enable you to link to an external application from within Word, Excel or Outlook, then pass data between that application and the Office XP document. In the case of Crystal Reports 9, this allows you to display elements of a database report within a word processor or spreadsheet document, then link directly to the original report. For reports where data is being extracted from multiple sources, this provides a quick and easy way of getting complex information into a shareable and editable format. By clicking on the Smart Tag, Word or Excel users can access the appropriate place in the original report using a separate browser window.

Features for web-based reporting include a Report Application Server, which requires Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) to be installed. The Report Application Server provides a selection of features for creating reports in HTML, Word and Excel, which can then be accessed without the need for a locally installed version of the product through a standard browser.

After all the efforts to improve usability, Crystal Reports 9 is still best suited to developers with a strong understanding of SQL and database construction. Still, the interface's familiarity, in some parts, to the hierarchical folders used in Windows Explorer certainly simplifies the process of managing items within a repository. Plus, each report has a Design and a Preview mode, making it easy to monitor how the final document will appear during development.

Most of the features discussed are available across the whole product range. The Standard Edition includes all of the command and function-building features, as well as template controls, but it omits the important repository and web-based reporting controls. Professional adds web reporting and repository building. However, if you're interested in viewing or building reports using Java, .NET or COM, you'll need either the Developer or the Advanced Edition.

Most of Crystal Reports' competitors tend to be integrated into a wider set of business intelligence tools such as Cognos or MicroStrategy. As a result, it doesn't have a lot of opposition as a standalone tool for report building. However, if you're only working with a single data type, you'll probably find that the Standard Edition doesn't offer any compelling features over the reporting tools already accompanying your desktop database.

Although the new repository tools mean that less experienced users don't have to understand SQL or functions to create reports, this is still a complex product from a developer's perspective. However, improved features for managing both completed reports and reusable objects benefit productivity and make Crystal Reports more accessible. Also, new formatting and distribution features make the output from Crystal Reports 9 much more easily integrated with other applications. Output is now more flexible too, with the addition of Report Parts and web-based tools. These add up to some significant improvements for which you'll pay dearly, but it's still not for the faint-hearted.