> Using SAP Crystal Reports 2011 To Protect Your Report Designs - Update #2
This week, we kicked off our next major Crystal Reports launch.
Unlike prior releases, where it's primarily a Crystal Reports centric event, this time we're updating the entire SAP Crystal portfolio with 2011 versions over the coming months.
The SAP Crystal Portfolio
- SAP Crystal Reports
- SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius)
- SAP Crystal Presentation Design (Xcelsius Present)
- SAP Crystal Interactive Analysis
- SAP Crystal Server
You might be wondering what happened to Crystal Reports Server? In the 2011 portfolio, it's now know as SAP Crystal Server.
The reason we're changing the name is we're repositioning that product as entry-level BI by adding some additional functionality. I'll talk about that in more detail in future posts. However, here's a 2 key things to keep in mind about SAP Crystal Server:
- We aren't increasing prices* despite the additional functionality.
- Anyone that buys SAP Crystal Reports Server 2008 today with maintenance gets free upgrades to SAP Crystal Server as part of the maintenance agreement.
*Some prices for some SKUs may change because of exchange rate adjustments, or because of channel adjustments as certain larger-sized SKUs get shifted to different sales channels. However there is no across-the-board price increase to account for the new features.
This week, we're making available for sale 3 of our desktop products in the portfolio. These are part of our rampup program, and are used to gain valuable end customer feedback before we make these generally available:
- SAP Crystal Reports 2011 (CR)
- SAP Crystal Dashboard Design 2011, departmental edition (DD dept)
- SAP Crystal Presentation Design 2011 (PD)
Rampup is not a beta program. This is fully supported, production software. During rampup, we collect customer feedback to confirm the quality level before we release shrinkwrap versions of these products. Customers who purchase under rampup, who do no opt-out of communications from SAP will be surveyed to share their experiences of the product.
Evaluation copies will be available online next week, at which time I'll update this blog.
Here's what's new in these products:
SAP Crystal Reports 2011
- Export to XLSX - this fully supports the new Excel 2007 and later file format.
- Export to the new read-only RPT format RPTR.
- Windows 7 logo compatibility
- Updated platform support - supports latest operating systems and data sources.
- Works with SAP Crystal Server 2011 and other SAP BusinessObjects server products.
- Integrated eLearning tutorials make it easy to get started for new users.
RPTR is a new format that cannot be opened by any report designer. Reports in this format can be used by the server products (SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0, SAP BusinessEdge BI 4.0, and SAP Crystal Server 4.0), the runtime engine included with SAP Crystal Reports for .NET 4.0, and SAP Crystal Reports Viewer 2011. This format solves the problem of protecting your report designs from undesired downstream modification. They're ideal for ISVs that want to prevent end users from modifying the report designs.
Important: In this release, we've simplified our developer solutions. We no longer have multiple offerings for .NET developers. Unlike SAP Crystal Reports 2008, SAP Crystal Reports 2011 does not include .NET developer tooling. If you're developing with Visual Studio 2010, we recommend you use the free SAP Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010. If you're using an older version of Visual STudio, SAP Crystal Reports 2008 includes .NET developer tooling that supports that version.
SAP Crystal Dashboard Design 2011, departmental edition and SAP Crystal Presentation Design 2011
- Support for Office 2010 32-bit, and Windows 7.
- Updated platform support - supports latest operating systems and data sources.
- Works with SAP Crystal Server 2011 and other SAP BusinessObjects server products.
- Integrated eLearning tutorials make it easy to get started for new users.
- Improved support for regional date and number formatting.
- Improved data access via Universes when used with SAP Crystal Server 2011.
The longstanding challenges of data access for Dashboard Design have been solved with the inclusion of the Query Panel when used with SAP Crystal Server 2011 (or other SAP BusinessObjects server products).
The query panel allows the dashboard designer to access data easily by dragging and dropping Universe objects. Then result objects can be directly assigned to charts, graphs, gauges, and sliders bypassing the spreadsheet. You can drag query panel prompts to your dashboard canvas to automatically creates prompt controls. Data access with Dashboard Design has never been this easy.
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