Crystal Reports software will be integrated into Rational’s new 7.0 desktop products to provide integrated Java report creation and management capabilities for Eclipse developers building enterprise applications.
Crystal Reports for IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform 7.0 is really an expanded version of Crystal Reports for Eclipse that comes with additional components specific to IBM Rational. Included is a Java reporting engine, a JavaServer Faces controls feature and a content import-export tool called Business Objects Business Intelligence Archive Resource that also provides version control and maintenance tools.
Rational 7.0 desktop users can also use Crystal Reports to hook into native Business Objects BI environments via drag and drop. A WYSIWIG report preview gives users a complete view of the runtime reports that can be publish to BusinessObjects BI environments.
Eclipse is an open source community popular among Java developers. Its projects aim to deliver vendor-neutral open application development platform frameworks.
IBM claims its Rational Software Delivery Platform 7.0 desktop products, which was released yesterday, provides the most comprehensive set of Eclipse-based offerings to facilitate the creation of SOAs. The desktop products release builds on the January release of Rational Systems Developer and the June release of IBM Rational Software Development Platform 7.0.
Business Objects, which has dual headquarters in Paris, France and San Jose, California, released an Eclipse version of its popular Crystal Reports tool this summer at Linuxworld as a first tentative step to embrace the open source community via Eclipse. Business Objects said that and its latest move was driven by strong demand by IBM and the Eclipse development community for robust reporting tools integrated into their development environments. Business Objects points to over 50,000 downloads of the Crystal Reports Eclipse software since the beta version became available in January this year.
The Rational 7.0 integration has been validated by IBM’s Ready for IBM Rational program. It continues a long history of embedding Crystal Reports into leading development environments. Crystal Reports is already integrated into Microsoft’s Visual Studio .NET, BEA Workshop and Borland JBuilder.
