Crystal Reports: The Best Enterprise Reporting Tool

Widely considered as a Business Intelligence tool, Crystal Reports has gone on to establish itself as a primary reporting tool for enterprise reporting needs.

 

Until a couple of years ago, standard applications like Excel and Acrobat were considered to be powerful reporting applications.  When Crystal Reports were launched, not many people supported the idea of having a desktop application that could do the same job as Excel.  As of today, the scenario has changed.  Many enterprises are realizing the value of Crystal Reports and have started to use Crystal Reports increasingly. 

 

Until a couple of years ago, standard applications like Excel and Acrobat were considered to be powerful reporting applications.  When Crystal Reports were launched, not many people supported the idea of having a desktop application that could do the same job as Excel.  As of today, the scenario has changed.  Many enterprises are realizing the value of Crystal Reports and have started to use Crystal Reports increasingly. 

The versions of Crystal Reports 

Crystal Reports started with Crystal Reports 6.0.  Offered in the Developer, Professional and Standard versions then, Crystal Reports have undergone a major sea change in terms of Versions developed since.  After the version 6, simultaneous deployment of Crystal Reports till Crystal Reports XI saw a lot of tools being incorporated into Crystal Reports that could make this a robust reporting system. 

Needless to say, a lot of people are curious to see the offerings of Crystal Reports 2008.  Crystal Reports 2008 is already touted to be the next big thing in Enterprise Reporting. 

Web Distribution – The latest advancement in Crystal Reports 

Originally, Crystal Reports were considered to be desktop applications.  You had to prepare the reports off your desktop and email it personally to a distribution list.  With increasing usage of Crystal Reports, the need for distributing the reports off the internet started growing.  People felt that by doing so, they could access the reports almost seamlessly. 

The integration of Crystal Reports with Visual Studio and .NET applications bought about this turnaround.  With this integration, people could distribute Crystal Reports off the internet on any .NET platform. 

System Considerations – Minimal but important 

Primarily, Crystal Reports is a desktop application.  This warrants that your local computer meets certain conditions in terms of their Operating System and Memory Space.  An OS of Windows Vista or Windows XP/2000 will do the trick for you.  Macintosh users can do with Mac OS X which is deemed compatible with Crystal Reports.  A Hard Disk Space of 150 MB and a memory space of close to 1 GB is considered vital for the operation of Crystal Reports. 

Crystal Reports – The tools contribute to the success 

Crystal Reports would not have been half as successful if it was not for their tools.  With tools for designing the -database and saving your report files at its disposal, Crystal Reports have gone on to become the only end-end reporting applications.  Crystal Report Designer, Crystal Report Viewer are only some tools from the long list of tools of Crystal Reports. 

Crystal Reports – A Summary 

If you wish to develop reports whose data can be analyzed and represented, use Crystal Reports.  With the latest advancement in Crystal Reports, now you could look at web distribution of the reports.