choose the right sap crystal reports version for your use case in the sap business object bi ecosystem

Choose the Right SAP Crystal Reports Version for Your Use Case

in the SAP BusinessObject BI Ecosystem

Ravichandran Mahadevan, VP Product Management

PublicSession# 2745

© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. 2Public

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Agenda

SAP Crystal Reports

What’s new in SAP Crystal Reports for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.X?

SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise

SAP Integration

What’s new in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1?

Choose the right verison

Recommendation

Roadmap

Q&A


Open, agnostic, and unifiedAccess any data, consume information anywhere

EnterprisePortals

MS OfficeOn Demand ServicesBrowsersMobile Devices

ERP

SAP Business Suite

Oracle E-Business Suite

PeopleSoft

JD Edwards

Unstructured data

in Social Media and

Hadoop

OLAP Cubes

Embedded Content

MS ExcelOracle, IBM DB2,

Microsoft SQL Server

and other relational data

sources

Unified Semantic Layer

Business Intelligence Platform

EDW

SAP NetWeaver BW

Teradata

Other data warehouses

SAP HANA Platform

Self-Service Dashboards and Apps Reporting


SAP Business IntelligenceOne Suite for All Insight

ReportingSelf-service

Dashboards

and Apps

Deliver engaging information to users where they need it

Track key performance indicators and summary data

Build custom experiences so users get what they need quickly

Securely distribute information across your organization

Answer related questions by interacting withpre-defined reports

Build printable reports for operational efficiency

Discover areas to optimize your business

Adapt data to business needs

Tell your story with beautiful visualizations

Discover. Predict. Create.

Build Engaging Experiences

Distribute Information


Self-serviceDiscover. Predict. Create.

Agility for business analysts and business

users

Discover trends, outliers and areas of interest in your business

Adapt to business scenarios by combining, manipulating, and

enriching data

Tell your story with self-service visualizations and analytics

Forecast and predict future outcomes

Portfolio

Lumira

Explorer*

Analysis*

Predictive Analysis*

* SAP BusinessObjects Explorer; SAP BusinessObjects Analysis; SAP Predictive Analysis


Dashboards and AppsBuild Engaging Experiences

Build engaging, visual dashboards

Powerful environment to build interactive and visually

appealing analytics

Rich set of controls: buttons, list boxes, drop-down,

crosstabs, charts…

Use custom code to extend and build workflows

Portfolio

Design Studio*

Dashboards (aka Xcelsius)*

* SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio; SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards


ReportingShare Information

High productivity design for report

designers

Quickly build formatted reports on any data source

Securely distribute reports both internally and externally

Minimize IT support costs by empowering end users

to easily create and modify their own reports

Enhance custom applications with embedded reports

Portfolio

Web Intelligence*

Crystal Reports*

* SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence; SAP Crystal Reports

SAP Crystal Reports


For Internal Operational Reports and Customer Facing

Easy to consume, highly formatted documents with guided interactivity

Personalized, information rich documents communicate value quickly

SAP Crystal ReportsProven world standard for pixel-perfect reports


Transform Data to Stunning Pixel-Perfect DocumentsReport Author build reports quickly

Build Professional Quality Documents Easily

Connect to data directly or via

semantic layer

Intuitive free-form reporting

with simple workflows

Transform, format and layout

data with precision and

powerful methods

Securely distribute relevant

reports globally to millions in

batch or on-demand

Embed reports within

business applications

Large Scale

Business ApplicationsMultiple delivery options

SAP Crystal ReportsWhat’s new in SAP Crystal Reports for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x?


SAP Crystal Reports in BI 4.x

With the release of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) 4.x , there are

two versions of Crystal Reports available for use with the BI Platform.

SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise

Major update & re-design of the

Crystal Reports Designer and

associated processing servers

Provides the foundation for all

future releases of Crystal Reports

SAP Crystal Reports 2011/2013

Incremental update to CR 2008 with

a few new features

Focused on serving the needs of

standalone, CR for Visual Studio,

and CR for Eclipse users

Continue to deliver existing

functionality with no regressions


FAQ

Can both CR 2011/2013 reports and CR for Enterprise reports reside or run

on the same BI 4.x system at the same time?

Yes

Can both the desktop CR 2011/2013 designer and the CR for Enterprise

designer be installed on the same workstation?

Yes

If I have many CR 2008/XI 3.1 reports, how should I upgrade to 4.x and what

version of CR should I use?

Upgrade to 4.x and utilize CR 2011/2013. Consider using CR for Enterprise of new

projects. Migrate CR 2011/2013 reports to CR for Enterprise when time permits.

How long will CR 2011/2013 versions be around and supported for?

For the supported lifecycle of 4.x which is a minimum of 7+2 years from the initial

4.0 release.


FAQ

How do I migrate a report from CR 2011/2013 to CR for Enterprise?

Open the CR 2011/2013 report with CR for Enterprise, change the data source and save to

the new format.

I am a new customer with not current CR content, what version of CR should

I use with the BI 4.x Platform?

If you are a new CR customer, evaluate CR for Enterprise first. The feature set may suit

your needs, and the there is no need to consider migration if you start with the newest

designer.


SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise Design and deliver information to engage and empower your audience

Highly formatted, professional looking reports with interactivityNew report designer user experience for improve report creation productivity

UI Harmonization across SAP BusinessObjects clients reduces user learning curve and accelerates adoption

New Charts to visualize insights

Greatest breadth and depth of data connectivitySupport for new Semantic Layer to guarantee a trusted, single version of the truth

Interoperability between SAP Crystal Reports and SAP BusinessObjects Analysis provides insightful information to be delivered as formatted reports

New SAP connectivity to SAP BW and SAP ERP provides a consistent data access across the BI suite

New Direct to Data connectivity with shared data connections

Scalable and efficient content delivery for ease of consumptionNew multilingual support reduces TCO by minimizing the number of reports required to support a global deployment

New alerting mechanism enables faster dissemination of information to the entire organization

New Crystal Reports SDK’s provides flexible report embeddibility


Easy-to-use, new design environment for novice and professional

designers

Create simple reports to represent complex data within a few minutes

Streamlined experience across the suite

SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise Create Stunning Documents faster than ever before

Tabbed Tool Bar

WYSIWYG

Point and Click

Easy-to-use

Navigation Panel


SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise Smart Formatting

Smart Guidelines Guidelines for easy column resizing

Drag and drop to reorder column

Automatic resizing and column shifting

for object and column insertion

Smart Default Formatting

Designer detects patterns in formatting

and adjusts automatically


Modern styling and unified look and feel for all BI solutions

Common query design experience across all data sources

SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise Consistent Experience Across the BI Suite


SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise Three New Visualizations

Tag Cloud Displays a cloud of dimensions

Tags are drillable

Treemap Uses the size and color of a box to

denote importance of a dimension in

relation to the data set being analyzed

Each box is drillable

Box Plot Charts five dimensions of data and

outliers

Drillable


Single trusted version of the truth

Exposes data in easy, every day business context via

integrated query panel and shared semantic layer

Break data silos, combine data from heterogeneous

sources within a report with multi-source universes

Hierarchical navigation

SAP ERP data access: model ABAP Functions, Info

Sets and InfoSet queries in .UNX universe

HANA support via HANA-JDBC to display tables, views,

and analytic views

New Data sources: Hadoop Hive, Essbase, XML files,

Webservices (WSDL 1.1) and OData 2.0

Common Semantic Layer (.UNX)Reduced learning curve and effort to build reports


Data Sources – Direct to Data Support

Provide direct connectivity to Enterprise focused data sources without requiring a

pre-authored data model.

Supported data sources Generic ODBC, JDBC, OLEDB

Oracle, MySQL, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access,

Microsoft Excel, Sybase, Teradata, SAP HANA

Displays previously created connections

Leverage data mapping UI from online templates feature

Lower TCO with shared data connections Reports that run on the BI Platform now utilize shared data

connections instead of having data connection information stored

per report.


How it Works Reports Managed by the BI Platform

DBMS

Report

Report

Report

DBMS

Info

DBMS

Info DBMS

Info

Relational Connection

Report

Report

Report

DBMS

Crystal Reports For Enterprise Crystal Reports 2011

CR for Enterprise reports saved to BI Platform MUST use Relational Connection objects to hold

connection info. CR 2011 reports continue to store connection info in each report.


Simplifying Enterprise ReportingSAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise with Relational Connections

Simplified Authoring

Create reports directly off relational data sources without first modeling the data

Connect to data in a few clicks, without knowing database system details

Simplified Deployment

Maintain DBMS middleware in a single place (on server, not on designer desktop)

Ease Life Cycle Management

Simplified Administration

Change DBMS connections for multiple reports all at once

Reduce report maintenance costs


SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis,

Edition for OLAP

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis,

Edition for MS Office

Analyze data , zero in on the area of interest , leverage

the view within SAP Crystal reports to broadly publish

the reports

Interoperability with SAP BusinessObjects AnalysisFlexibility to format and share content


Crystal Reports metadata

– Text Objects

– Prompts

– Tooltips

– Anything with text…

SAP BusinessObjects Business

Intelligence platform supported

features

– Translation Manager

– Translate Locally or via

Export/Import using XLFF

– Schedulable Translation

Create Once, schedule and publish

reports in multiple languages

French

German

English

Multi-lingual ReportingReduce effort and number of reports for global deployments

SAP Crystal ReportsScalable and efficient content delivery


Users subscribe to alerts within

BI launch pad

Notifies subscribers when

specific criteria has been met

Platform Driven AlertingReduce information overload with exception reporting


New BI Platform Features for CR content

Insight to Action

Bind SAP Report to Report Interface (RRI) actions to report

objects

Enable actions via a simple right-click menu command

Invoke actions from the report

Invoking an available action on field passes data from

report

Supported only for reports based on BEx Queries


Planned innovationsNew Crystal Reports SDK

RESTful Web Service

Navigate reports via REST service

Expose Report Structure/Metadata represented in OData and data

exposed via JSON

Push data into the report

Supports multiple export formats via a single URI call

Platform support

Supports both CR 2011 and CR for Enterprise content

Embed report content via any HTTP/Web capable programming

language

CR Javascript API

Embedding

Client rendering handled via server-side Javascript

Supports CSS styling

No client-side installation or deployment

Javascript

Event listener support to load custom javascript functions (i.e.

events for drill downs and group hierarchies)

openDocument URL’s are compatible with CR JavaScript API

customizations

Integration with other APIs (e.g., Google Maps, Google

Translation)

Logo customization in the viewer, Styling / Skinning of DHTML

Viewer

SAP Crystal Reports for

Enterprise 4.1



Comprehensive Support for SAP HANA

Create Crystal Reports based on HANA’s relational and OLAP data structures

Direct OLAP access to Analytic and

Calculated views including hierarchies &

variables (required BI Platform to manage

connections)

Authored relational UNX universe support

Direct Relational access (JDBC & ODBC) to

tables, views, and analytic views

Support for JDBC & ODBC SSL

Authentication: Single Sign on through SAML



Streamline Report Design

The SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise designer introduces more efficient workflows and features focused

on reducing time to create and format reports

Freehand SQL command object

Customize the SQL to optimize the query to

relational data sources

Verify Database options

Ensure the report query reflects the modifications

to the underlying data source

Subreport Enhancements

The datasource for a subreport is no longer

restricted to be of the same type as the main

report.

Eg. A BW report with an ERP universe subreport

is now possible



Data Sources

Significant focus on performance and reliability is provided in BI 4.1 when accessing BEX queries through

Crystal Reports

Enhanced SAP BW support

Persist variable values in query panel and consume in HTML

viewer

Level selection for BW Hierarchy Variables

Level selection based on relative depth for BW Hierarchy

Node Variables

Variable selection before design time display of query panel

Toggle between technical name vs. member caption for BW

variables

Enhanced SAP ECC support

Support SAP ECC’s optional parameters with no default value

when access through an authored universe



Mobile and Viewers

Interactive Crystal Reports in SAP

BusinessObjects Mobile BI

Opendoc support in Mobile BI

Right to Left support in HTML viewer Mirrored interface based on product locale

Right to left reporting of Arabic

Bi-directional text support in a single report

Other enhancements Paging capability for flat LOVs in HTML viewer (next,

previous)

Default view action in BI Launchpad

Choose the right version


Choose based on Data source

SAP Crystal Reports 2013 and SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise can run side by side on the same desktop client.


Data connectivitySAP Crystal Reports 2013 vs. SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise


NetWeaver integration


BI 4.x platform

Servers can be run side by side on the same server. SAP BusinessObjects BI4.x server install package

installs both set of servers by default. Reports created in SAP Crystal Reports 2013 will processed on the 32

bit servers, reports created in Crystal Reports for Enterprise will be processed by the 64 servers.

SAP Crystal ReportsRecommendations


SAP Crystal

Reports 2011SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise

(CRe)

Foundation for all future releases of SAP Crystal

Reports

“Risk free” adoption of Innovation

Preserve existing investments - Run with existing

CR 2008 content

Adopt at your own pace - Run CR 2008, CR

2011/2013 and CRe content from the same

common platform

Adopt SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise “Risk free” adoption of Innovation

Roadmap


Planned Innovations Future DirectionToday

SAP Crystal Reports for EnterpriseProduct road map overview - key themes and capabilities

This is the current state of planning and may be changed by SAP at any time.

Streamlined report design

Chart extension API.

Richer chart formatting.

Enhance report formatting.

CR 2013 to CR for Enterprise

bulk transition tools

Data sources

Additional BW, SAP ECC table

support.

Support UNX view time security

Mobile, and viewers

Crystal Reports content in

custom built mobile applications

OEM/Developer

Richer RESTful web services

(Release 4.1 SP6)


Improved user experience

Custom SQL objects

Verify database

Data sources

Modeled and unmodeled connectivity to

data.

Enhanced SAP HANA support

SAP BW BICS connectivity

Mobile, visualizations and viewers

Interactive Crystal Reports in SAP

BusinessObjects Mobile

New visualizations

Right to left UI

OEM/developer

RESTful web service, Odata, Opendoc

AJAX API

Information access

Alerting

Insight to action (RRI)


Charting enhancement: waterfall

chart

QR code and Bar Code support

Vertical Alignment of text

Direct to data connectivity

enhancement

Crystal Reports for HANA / HANA

Cloud Platform

Support Crystal Reports for HANA

Cloud Platform.

Restful API for report viewing,

refresh ,export workflow.

SAPUI5 embeddable viewer.

OEM/Developer for BI platform

Continued REST API

enhancements

Customizable and embeddable

SAPUI5 viewer


Planned Innovations Future DirectionTodayToday

SAP Crystal Reports 2013Product road map overview - key themes and capabilities

Viewer interactivity

Interactive parameters

On-report sort and drill

Breadth of data access

Direct connectivity, web technologies,

semantic layer

Data visualization

Over 40 charts

Dashboard integration

Report delivery

Scheduling and publishing

Multiple export formats

Localization

Embedded into applications

New platform support

Visual Studio 2013, Office 2013, SAP HANA,

Hadoop


Continued support of new data sources,

applications, and operating systems

Continued improvement

Minor updates to existing features including:

– Vertical Alignment

– Conditional formatting for Line and Box

– Show Description of selected parameter

value(s) in report


Continued support of new data sources,

applications, and operating systems

Continued improvement

Minor updates to existing features

This is the current state of planning and may be changed by SAP at any time.

(Release BI4.1)


Questions?

Idea Place (enhancement requests): http://ideas.sap.com

Product Documentation: http://help.sap.com/

4.x eLearning: http://www.sap.com/LearnBI

CR Classic to CR for Enterprise wiki:

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/From+Crystal+Reports+2008+to+SAP+Crystal+Repo

rts+2011+or+SAP+Crystal+Reports+for+Enterprise

http://ideas.sap.com/

http://help.sap.com/

http://www.sap.com/LearnBI

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/From+Crystal+Reports+2008+to+SAP+Crystal+Reports+2011+or+SAP+Crystal+Reports+for+Enterprise

© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

Thank you

Ravichandran Mahadevan

VP Product Management

SAP

Software

choose the right sap crystal reports version for your use case in the sap business object bi ecosystem