Crystal Reports

Crystal Reports is a business intelligence application used to design and generate reports from a wide range of data sources. Several other applications, including Microsoft Visual Studio, at one time bundled an OEM version of Crystal Reports as a general purpose reporting tool.^[1] Crystal Reports is a popular report writer, especially when Microsoft bundled it with Visual Studio versions 2003 through 2008. Microsoft discontinued this practice and later released their own competitive reporting tool, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).^{[2][verification needed]} Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010 is still available as add-on software.

[edit] History

The product was originally created by Crystal Services Inc. as Quick Reports^[3] when they couldn't find a suitable commercial report writer for their accounting software. After producing versions 1.0 through 3.0, the company was acquired in 1994 by Seagate Technology.^[4] Crystal Services was combined with Holistic Systems to form the Information Management Group of Seagate Software, which later rebranded as Crystal Decisions and produced versions 4.0 through 9.0. Crystal Decisions was acquired in December 2003 by Business Objects, which produced versions 10, 11 (XI) and version 12 (2008). Business Objects was acquired by SAP on October 8, 2007. Crystal Reports 2011 (version 14) was released on May 3, 2011.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Features

[edit] Report designer

Crystal Reports allows users to graphically design data connection(s) and report layout. In the Database Expert, users can select and link tables from a wide variety of data sources, including Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Oracle databases, Business Objects Enterprise business views, and local file system information. Fields from these tables can be placed on the report design surface, and can also be used in custom formulas, using either BASIC or Crystal's own syntax, which are then placed on the design surface. Formulas can be evaluated at several phases during report generation as specified by the developer.

Both fields and formulas have a wide array of formatting options available, which can be applied absolutely or conditionally. The data can be grouped into bands, each of which can be split further and conditionally suppressed as needed. Crystal Reports also supports subreports, graphing, and a limited amount of GIS functionality.

[edit] Supported data sources

Accessible data sources include the following:

• Databases such as PostgreSQL, Sybase, IBM DB2, Ingres, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Interbase and Oracle
• Btrieve
• Spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel
• Text files
• HTML XML files
• Groupware applications as Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise
• SAP: BW, Info Sets, Tables, and Business Objects Universes
• Any other data source accessible through a web service, ODBC, JDBC or OLAP.

[edit] Target audience

Crystal Reports came integrated with Visual Studio versions prior to 2010. Crystal Reports competes with several solutions in the Microsoft market, such as SQL Server Reporting Services, XtraReports, ActiveReports, Telerik Reporting, and List & Label. Crystal Reports also provides solutions outside of the Microsoft market, for instance allowing Java developers to build applications with Crystal Reports components.