If you have been looking forward to finding an ideal Crystal Reports tutorial, you have come down to the right place. This post covers every basic aspect of Crystal Reports, including its meaning, usage, history, features, advantages, and disadvantages. Along with that, you also get a brief comparison between crystal reports vs Cognos.
Crystal Reports is specifically designed to work with databases to help you evaluate as well as interpret essential information. By understanding this Crystal Reports Tutorial, you get to understand how to use this software better for product reports from virtually any type of data source, such as Microsoft Excel, XML Data Source, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and more.
Furthermore, Crystal Reports is easy to use and can allow you to create anything, right from simple to complex reports. To help you out understand this software thoroughly, this post covers the basics of crystal reports.
It is a BI tool that is used for generating analytical reports from both SAP as well as non-SAP sources of data, such as Microsoft Excel, XML Data Source, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, and more. The tool’s knowledge assists businesses to create advanced level reports and taking precisely as well as profitable business decisions on the basis of these reports.
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The primary purpose of using Crystal Reports is to let users pull the preferred data from a data source, be it an MS SQL Server database, Oracle, or any other database supported by this software. And then, users get to present the data in an organized and repeatable way.
Back in 1991, the Crystal Reports software was created by Terry Cunningham and his peers. However, later it was acquired by Seagate Technology in 1994. And then, in 2003, Crystal Decisions software was again taken over by BusinessObjects.
Its 11th version was released in the year 2004. Later, on October 8, 2007, SAP acquired BusinessObjects. In the last few years, versions 14.0, 14.1, and 14.2 were released in 2011, 2013, and 2016 respectively.
Companies have a variety of choices regarding how they wish to pursue developing business intelligence resources. There is an extensive consensus that a variety of businesses can’t ignore this factor any longer. So, while Crystal Reports is in the limelight, Cognos is another alternative that is developed by IBM and is being used by several companies are using. Let’s have a brief comparison between Crystal Reports vs Cognos.
Factors
Crystal Reports
Cognos
To begin with, the Report Design Canvas assists you in designing the report’s structure. You can include a variety of elements in it, such as data objects, tests, charts, and more. Let’s find out some of the common but significant components of crystal reports:
This specific option showcases a rule above the report canvas. However, the tool lets you change the measurement unit by changing the unit option on the design canvas tab.
The structure and page mode assists you in defining the reports’ layout. Every object in the structure mode is signified by a frame. Some of the important components are mentioned below:
| Name of the Component | Details |
| Report Header | It is specifically used for adding the Report title or any other information at the top of the report. |
| Page Header | This one is used to display information at the top of every page. This section basically comprises chapter names, document heading, and more. |
| Page Footer | The page footer is used to display page numbers or other information at the end of every page. |
| Body | This specific section is meant to show the report’s body. All of the report’s data should be included in this specific section. |
| Page Mode | Page mode is to represent the actual data when the report will be published and printed. |
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With crystal reports, you can effortlessly connect to several data sources, such as:
If you wish to connect to the data sources, follow these steps:
To choose a data source, make sure you have connected to the SAP Business Objects platform server. For that, follow these steps:
Here are some of the features of SAP Crystal Reports that you must know:
The SAP crystal reports are usually used to extract customized analytical reports from a variety of data sources. These reports also assist businesses in developing a database reporting environment to access, format, and view the data along with integrating the reports with a variety of applications to make them available for everybody in the organization.
For enterprises, crystal reports provide an interface that allows you to create, format, and publish efficient reports. The menu bar offers an extensive range of features as shown below:
Jotted down below are some advantages of SAP Crystal Reports:
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Here are some disadvantages of SAP Crystal Reports:
Now that you have understood that the crystal reports are helpful for business leaders when it comes to developing advanced reporting to take accurate decisions, it is the time you integrate them into your business. Apart from this crystal reports tutorial, you can move ahead and explore this software more to understand its hidden factors and create personalized reports in no time.
Course Schedule| Name | Dates | |
|---|---|---|
| Crystal Reports Training | Sep 14 to Sep 29 | View Details |
| Crystal Reports Training | Sep 17 to Oct 02 | View Details |
| Crystal Reports Training | Sep 21 to Oct 06 | View Details |
| Crystal Reports Training | Sep 24 to Oct 09 | View Details |
