Crystal Reports 2008 offers new tools and capabilities for interactive reporting and richer data visualizations enabled by embedded Adobe Flash technologies. The new capabilities are backed up by an improved report design environment that Business Objects said offers report developers greater flexibility and ease of use than past versions.
Flash reports authored in Business Objects Xcelsius visual analytics tool and Abode’s Flex development environments can now be integrated directly into Crystal reports. This will enable users to connect Xcelsius visualizations with Crystal Reports data to do what if simulations and various other data modeling tasks.
Crystal Reports 2008 can also connect with a variety of XML file formats and web services for enabling so-called data mash-ups. ESRI, a provider of geographical information systems software, has already connected Crystal Reports data to its own web service to do mapping directly inside Crystal reports.
Business Objects said the mash-up capabilities are also useful for industries like healthcare and financial services to map Crystal Reports to web services that comply with strict regulatory data exchange and reporting mandates like HL7 and XBRL.
Another new capability is improved navigation and viewing of Crystal reports in multiple formats, which is the result of interactive one-click parameterization options for filtering and sorting of data. The software puts a navigation pane in a report that allows different users to view data in a single report in multiple ways. This could be either as a standard tabular cross-tab report or a dashboard view of summarized sales data.
Business Objects said that giving users the freedom to view multiple views of information from a single report without the need to re-query the database or build a new report is a first in the reporting market.
Other enhancements in Crystal Reports 2008 include a revamped look and feel across the tool and improved barcode support for report design functions
James Thomas, vice president of marketing for BI content and tools at San Jose, California-based Business Objects, said Crystal Reports 2008 is a major release and said it represents the twelfth generation of well-known software brand has been kicking around the market for 15-plus years now. Business Objects got its hands on the tool through its 2003 acquisition of Crystal Decisions for $830m.
He said the new embedded Flash and Flex capabilities allows Crystal reports to be more easily integrated into everyday operational decision making processes.
Today a report is often the end of a process. It’s created and printed. We’re now providing an ability to do ‘action-based reporting’ that allows developers to more easily build applications that tie the reports to business processes and enable users to take action directly from the report, like approval for instance, he said.
Thomas also said the industry-first capability that lets report developers build a single report that serves the needs of multiple types of business intelligence users helps to bump up their productivity and reduces so-called report proliferation, which can be a big management headache for large companies.
Users have had to wait a long time for the latest Crystal Reports 2008 upgrade. The last major release of the Crystal Reports software was over three years ago when it launched Crystal Reports XI. The tool was then tightly integrated into Business Objects’ new XI enterprise BI platform.
Thomas said Crystal Reports 2008 will also tie in to the XI BI platform, but some of its advanced functionality won’t be available in that environment just yet.
Crystal Reports 2008 is priced at $495 for a single, fully functional edition. Business Objects had previously sold Crystal Reports in three editions: standard, professional, and developer. Crystal Reports 2008 does away with that and now consolidates the cascading functionality of those three editions into a single product.
Thomas said it will officially ship in November but users can order the software from Business Objects’ web site this week.
Business Objects launched the new reporting software on the opening day of its Insight user conference, which kicks off in Orlando Florida today. Last week German business applications software giant SAP announced its intent to acquire Business for $6.8bn. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008.
