Crystal (Reports) Enterprise Embedded or AKA Crystal RAS

V

VanWoert

New Member
Hello all!

Our company just finished upgrading from Progress V8.3 to V10. Now we would like to setup Crystal Reports within our invironment.

A quick snapshot of our invironment would be like this...
V10 Database running on a SUN box, we run both character and GUI interface.
The character environment is accessed via a terminal emulator directly to the SUN box. The GUI environment is accessed via a shortcut on the workstation desktop to a Windows Server 2003 share where the Progress V10 client has been loaded. Thus avoiding the need to load the client on each persons workstation.

I want to keep this type of simple administation with the installation of Crystal Reports V10. I am new to Crystal Reports and Progress. So far what I have found on Business Objects website has been vague, non-existant, misleading, or I'm just looking in the wrong places for the information I would like to have. I believe that the best solution would be to load Crystal Enterprise Embedded (AKA RAS previous to Crystal V10) on a server and have all the reports run from that server, thus avoiding the need to load any .dll's on workstations or have to worry about getting the ODBC driver loaded on each workstation. I am looking for someone that has done this and maybe point me towards the right direction in setup and access.

If no one has done this type of setup before I will update this post with what I find out to hopefully help someone else in the future.

Scot VanWoert
Dayton, Ohio
 
Hello,
I've never install crystal enterprise embedded on server, but i'm usingcrystal report from progress to send interactive edition and batchedition. A crystal viewer is intalled on clients and on the server witha valid odbc connection and progress installation with the merantodbc. Then .rpt are stored on a server directory.
I think u need something on client to launch report edition from progress to crystal.
So cystal on server, who allow batch edition process, seems to be expensive no?
 
The easy question first, expense... Crystal Reports Advanced Developer costs just a hair more than $2000.00 and comes with Crystal Enterprise Embedded Edition.

From more reading it looks as though the Embedded install is used to support Active-X and Java calls for Crystal Reports. Which sounds very nice IF I was programing a web page/site. All of our applications are either in character based or GUI based.

You say that you have a Crystal Viewer loaded on the client workstations. From everything I have read thus far, in order to use Crystal Viewer on the client workstation you must also load and configure the Progress ODBC driver on each of those same workstations. My goal was to avoid doing this, and have one location to manage the viewer and ODBC connection, instead of 25-35 separate locations.

Also Progress is hyping up Crystal Enterprise. PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE IS A LARGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "Crystal Enterprise" AND "Crystal Enterprise Embedded". I think that Business Objects made an error when they rename the RAS product to Crystal Enterprise Embedded. It is very confusing when you are trying to read their documentation on their website because most of the documentation still references the product as RAS instead of Embedded. No big deal for developers familar with the product, but for someone new coming in and working with it...
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Oh, sorry now that I am done with my rant... "Progress is hyping up Crystal Enterprise"... well this product is a completely web driven product where you can have a repository, allow users to change reports (within confines defined by the developer of course), and run reports directly from the web site. THIS IS EXPENSIVE.

Scot
 
Scot,

If you need server-centric reporting from Progress you need to be speaking to Cyberscience - the best reporting solution from Progress that I've seen. More powerful and more user-friendly than Crystal.

I think they're in Denver?

Good luck.
Jacob.
 
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