SAP Crystal Reports Reviews

This report writer is extremely easy to use. It provide good looking reports that are robust and allow easy integration into my visual studio applications. The ease of programming with crystal's api base gives me full control of how my reports are to behave without having to pass parameters in to the report.

API programming on subreports can be tough but once learned, it's not too bad. Also, I found dynamic database connections are tricky due when working in domains. But again, once learned, it is easy to continue

There are so many features that crystal has over their competitors, many of them being small, yet they have such big impact when reporting.

Wish crystal reports wasn't so resource hungry, but besides that everything else seems to be pretty good!

There is nothing about this product that is useful. It may have been a good reporting tool before, but there are many other products out there now that would be better to use.

It is a very convoluted and tricky system to figure out how to use, it takes forever to figure out how to use. It is very old school and inundated.

Very good tool for database integration and datawarehouse for the generation of reports. It has multiple options for the generation of multiple indicators in the business process.

The technical support is quite slow, it is the only thing that I would ask you to improve.

SAP Crystal Reports is the most important tool to know your results in each transaction, to verify the health of your organization.

I don't have cons. SAP Crystal Reports is easy deploy any kind of reports inserting graph on the same report. I like SAP Crystal Reports.

Flexible tie in to your existing system and infrastructure is a plus, it handles many different criteria and complex output.

This is a product that has been around a long time. And it does a lot. But it does not look good doing it. The output never quite matches the template thing, and the customization is tedious beyond imagine.

The main pro for me was it made producing student evaluations easier. They would come out individually per course section. Which saves me time on editing and uploading to faculty review documents.

The system was slow and many times did not work. The program my university used didn’t have a download option, we could only select to print. Which meant that the reports were processed and printed I would have to go back and scan them and send them back to me.

This can easily create report using database views and tables

Updating is very slow new versions come to spend lot of times

Linked between different department help easy to check all the information and data, especially reduce questions

Sometimes it's a bit over-complicated to export reports or process the input entries

Very appealing and good looking features

Little complicated and not much easy to use

Learning Crystal Reports is only part of the educational process for learning Business Intelligence Reporting. You need to have the fundamental ability to become familiar with how a business operates, how it uses information. You need to be able to translate a company's requirements for managing and and acting on information to the technical organization and structure of its data systems. To be a successful report developer you need to be able to speak both languages. There are some great resources out there for Crystal Reports professionals, such my own Crystal Reports group on LinkedIn, where developers meet and share ideas as well as where employers and recruiters come to find them. There is also the Crystal Reports Users Group Crystal Users group, both hosted by Yahoo Groups, which have been serving and supporting Crystal Reports professionals for over a decade. Plus many web sites, online tutorials, video tutorials, skills training and more. Just don't forget that there are two sides to Business Intelligence Reporting - and Crystal Reports is only one of them.

Crystal Reports is a highly featured and flexible business intelligence tool that has been around for over 2 decades. It is database independent, meaning you can develop reports against just about any database or structured file format, from Microsoft SQL and Oracle, to flat file to text file to spreadsheets to anything for which you can access via ODBC, DAO, XML, OLE DB, JDBC and many more protocols. Crystal Reports integrates seamlessly into SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise products as well as other SAP data management products. Reports can link tables internally within the design template, or developers can build their own external SQL Queries, views, stored procedures or universes and build their reports off those data sources. Crystal also allows developers to script their custom own SQL-based query in the Database Editor. And if your data source changes, Crystal provides tools for mapping your existing report over to the new similarly structured data source. Record selection formulas can help filter out unwanted data to improve the efficiency of report performance.

Crystal Reports has a highly flexible report design editor that features multi-pass linear data processing, allowing analysis to be performed while reading records as while printing records. Data may be grouped or sorted based on raw data or on formulas that can analyze and manipulate record data for customized processing. Crystal Reports allows developers to create virtually any kind of data-based report, from tabular column listings to data-driven letters to charts, cross-tabs, free-form and (pre-printed) form-fitting solutions. Extensive summary functions, running totals, and a rich formula programming language (Crystal also supports Basic syntax) provide unlimited opportunity to manage and manipulate raw data for analysis and presentation to the customer, be it a management report, operations report or customer-facing report. With sub-reports, it is possible to link together tangentially Connected Data sources, expanding the opportunities of publishing relevant information onto a single page or report. Individually formattable multi-section detail, page and group headers and footer sections allow the developer to play with suppression, paging and other formatting options and formulas.

Crystal Reports is a WSIWYG design tool, allowing you to see what you are doing as you do it. Whether you use the the grid or guidelines with the Design Tool, or the size and alignment tools with the Preview Tool, Crystal lets you create the report as you want to see it. You can integrate external images, files, or even BI products, such as Crystal Dashboards (Xelcius). Through the use of parameters, reports can be designed to include user input in the record selection, formatting and operation of the report. Reports can be generated for printing, export to Adobe Acrobat, to Microsoft Excel or many other formats. Crystal can also be easily linked into 3rd party applications through XML, Java, Visual Studio or other APIs. Crystal Reports can also be easily delivered through the Crystal Reports Server or the Business Objects Enterprise Server, providing a hosting platform for both scheduled automation and on-demand report generation.

For someone experienced in business intelligence, databases or programming, Crystal Reports is relatively intuitive, though it will take time and experience to learn how to fully leverage every feature. There are included tutorials that teach the basics, but real world situations often defy the simplicity of the provided solutions. There are plenty of third-party resources from Yahoo and LinkedIn groups to user support web sites and video, instructional and printed training materials. Crystal is not something that the home user can jump into. The license is relatively expensive and does not include a database server, database or other data source. Licensing for enterprise environments can get pricey quickly. While many employers hire report developers directly, there is a large community of professional report developers who work contracts, either independently or through contract employment agencies. In most cases, the employer provides the licensed Crystal Reports tool, but if a company has only infrequent report development needs, they may expect the consultant to provide their own copy of the software. SAP is really not set up for supporting the individual, however, preferring to engage the company in business-licensed products.

Crystal Reports has incredible flexibility but their are limitations, mostly in formatting. Working with lines and boxes is not as flexible as, say, Microsoft Word. Charts and graphs have many features and options but they can be difficult to try and force your data to conform to the usage requirements. Graphics cannot be edited in-template, and some image formats are not supported (though you can easily convert an image to a supported format). The design tool can have issues with orphaned text at the bottom or the top of a page. While you can include comments in formulas, there is no ability to provide comments to the actual data, static, calculated value or other objects within the report design. Rules applied to the selection and manipulation of data can have unexpected results, leading to manual troubleshooting of report design and database queries. Like any piece of template design software, there are bound to be situations where you want to do something a certain way that is not supported by Crystal Reports, which can lead to frustration. But there are usually ways to think outside of the box to accomplish what you want.

Crystal Reports is getting a little long in the tooth. While still one of the worlds' most popular reporting tools, It hasn't received a major update in many years, while Microsoft's SQL Server Reporting Services as well as open-source and other business intelligence competition products have grown in popularity, and it shows. The user interface and feature set hasn't significantly changed in quite a while. Of course, it was already pretty rich and complete, but it lacks the feel and finish of many current generation software products. There is also no version available for the Apple Mac, which means no support for iOS devices. Some feel that SAP doesn't see the Crystal product line as the best place for its R&D investments, pushing more data analytic based products such as Web Intelligence. I think there is room and demand for both and wish SAP would wow me with an upgrade that would transform Crystal Reports into a new generation of business intelligence reporting that sets the bar for everyone else.

Almost every business application requires reports of their data on daily/monthly basis.
They require reports not only in tabular form but also they need visual digrams to analyze performance of their business.
As a developer i always use crystal reports to develop complex reports that require charts and grouped data for readability and correct and ultimate analysis.
Its easy to develop and connect with underlying datatables.
Any kind of complex colored, tabular and visual report can be generated from this.i really love it.

Its my favourite reporting engine and there is nothing to be liked least about it.
I used it from beginning and got fan of it.

The ability to customize reports is helpful.
Comprehensive. The system has the ability to report on many aspects of business.

Difficult to learn report writing requirements.
Trial and error yields unproductive data reporting.
Once parameters are established for requests, downloading data fields is sometimes slow.

Its comprehensive, well know and used across industries so many designers. Basic graphing but robust reporting.

Could be more user friendly, you need about six months to get good at it

I liked its compatibility with many software, especially those based on C# and ASP.NET, so it is indispensable in our software for extracting and analyzing reports .

I don't find any major downsides, but the user interface should be improved to be easier and more friendly .

The flexibility of what I can do with my data is invaluable. I am able to create custom reports to extract necessary information from our databases.

The newer version of this software does not allow me to open a new report while another report is generating, but it does so more quickly than the old software, so it's a give and take.

Our company prints our checks with SAP Crystal Reports. The checks look very professional and it is very easy to use. We have four companies that we use SAP Crystal for printing checks and it is very easy to jump from one company to the next and the checks look so good. This software is used with our Spectrum accounting software.

I don't know how I would contact support if I needed it for this software. If we have issues, we have to get help from an IT person at our work.

Connects to SQL and it gets the data as needed, and with the right formulas and know how, you can customize the reports to your liking get as specific as you need.

Dated interface and not the most user friendly. If you have never used it, getting it set up and running might be a little confusing, but if you know some basic SQL, you can make it do what you need.