What Is Crystal Enterprise?

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mastering crystal reports 9
Chapter 23 - Crystal Enterprise
Mastering Crystal Reports 9
by Cate McCoy and Gord Maric
Sybex 2003

Crystal Decisions recognized the need for a company-wide reporting system that manages reports, is secure, and has the ability to schedule reports, archive old reports, easily deploy to users, and give the users the ability to view reports online or offline. Crystal Enterprise is that system.

The heart of Crystal Enterprise is Crystal Reports. Any Crystal Report that you create can be published to Crystal Enterprise. Crystal Enterprise can also handle Crystal Analysis Reports.

Note 

Crystal Decisions has another report-writing tool called Crystal Analysis that specializes in Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) reports.

Crystal Enterprise can be used on a single computer for a small company or department as a central reporting system, or it can be installed on many computers that handle thousands of users in a large corporate-wide reporting system. By installing Crystal Enterprise on many computers the system can be configured for fault tolerance. If one computer fails, the other computers will take over, providing reliability in the reporting system.

Flavors of Crystal Enterprise

Crystal Enterprise comes in three editions: Report Application Server, Standard, and Professional.

Crystal Enterprise Report Application Server is the entry-level edition of Crystal Enterprise, and it is included with the Crystal Reports Developer and Advanced Editions. It can be installed on only a single computer, but it does allow up to five concurrent user connections. However, much of the functionality found in the Standard and Professional Editions is disabled, but you can provide a simple web-based reporting application. Its intended purpose is to give developers a basic platform for Crystal Enterprise development with the idea that eventually they will upgrade their applications to one of the more full-featured editions of Crystal Enterprise. For more details, see Chapter 24, “Report Application Server.”

The Standard Edition of Crystal Enterprise is a step up from the Report Application Server, but it too has some of the Professional-level features disabled. The primary features that are missing are security and the ability to distribute report processing across multiple computers. You will need to purchase an upgrade to the Professional Edition if you want to take Crystal Enterprise to a larger user base in your organization.

Crystal Enterprise Professional Edition is the full-featured version that has all of the enterprise-wide reporting capabilities enabled. It is this version that we will be discussing in this section of the book.

Note 

Version confusion: The current version of Crystal Enterprise is 8.5, released in May 2002. Unfortunately, Crystal Enterprise 8.5 is not compatible with Crystal Reports 9.0, although the Report Application Server that ships with some of the Crystal Reports 9.0 editions is compatible. According to a whitepaper posted on the Crystal Decisions website at http://www.crystaldecisions.com/products/crystalreports/downloads/cr9_ras.pdf, a newer version of Crystal Enterprise should be available in late 2002. It is certain that this newer version of Crystal Enterprise will be compatible with Crystal Reports 9.0.

Crystal Enterprise Components

Let’s take a look at the components that make up Crystal Enterprise 8.5. We can be fairly confident that these will be the same components that make up Crystal Enterprise 9. (Of course, more features will be added to version 9.) This will give you a good idea of what makes up Crystal Enterprise and help you decide if you would like to upgrade to version 9 when it is released. If your company has version 8.5 of Crystal Enterprise, this will explain what you have and how to configure it.

Crystal Enterprise is a large application that consists of many components. The components include applications that the end users or administrators of the system use and services/daemons (programs) that run on the server. Figure 23.1 is a diagram of all the components of Crystal Enterprise. Before we discuss installing Crystal Enterprise, you need a better understanding of what it includes.

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Figure 23.1. Crystal Enterprise architecture

Web Browser Applications

The web browser components are the most visible part of Crystal Enterprise. They include an end-user application and an administrative application:

ePortfolio ePortfolio is the end-user application, allowing users to access, schedule, and view reports from a web browser. Figure 23.2 shows the main ePortfolio page, which displays a list of reports and folders available to users.

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Figure 23.2. ePortfolio main page

The list shows the sample reports that are included with Crystal Enterprise. If we select the Inventory Report (By Category) option, we are presented with a menu to view the latest instance, to schedule a report, or to view the historical report, as shown in Figure 23.3.

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Figure 23.3. Report Options menu

If we choose to view the latest instance, we are presented with that report in a Crystal Report Viewer, as shown in Figure 23.4.

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Figure 23.4. Viewing a report from Crystal Enterprise

Crystal Management Console Crystal Management Console is a web-based Crystal Enterprise administration application. Administrators can set up users, folders, and groups and manage the Crystal Enterprise services with this tool. Figure 23.5 displays the main menu of the Crystal Management Console.

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Figure 23.5. Crystal Management Console main menu

Client Components

Most users will not need anything installed on their computers because Crystal Enterprise is designed as a web-based application. However, it includes the following tools that can be installed on a client’s computer if required. The tools are mostly used by administrators of the Crystal Enterprise environment or users who need to view reports offline. When you install Crystal Enterprise, these tools are available by choosing Start > Program Files > Crystal Enterprise. They can be selectively installed as needed.

Crystal Configuration Manager This is an administration tool used to configure, start, and stop Crystal Enterprise server services. Crystal Configuration Manager is similar to the Windows 2000 Services administration tool located in the Administrative Tools folder off the Windows Start menu. Figure 23.6 displays Crystal Configuration Manager with all the Crystal Enterprise services running. We will use this tool later in the chapter to configure Crystal Enterprise.

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Figure 23.6. Crystal Enterprise Configuration Manager

Crystal Import Wizard Crystal Enterprise is the second-generation enterprise-reporting tool offered by Crystal Decisions; the first one was called Seagate Info. See the sidebar, “Crystal Enterprise versus Seagate Info,” later in this chapter. The Crystal Import Wizard is an administrative tool that migrates a Seagate Info configuration to Crystal Enterprise or vice versa. Figure 23.7 displays the Crystal Import Wizard.

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Figure 23.7. Crystal Import Wizard

Crystal Publishing Wizard The Crystal Publishing Wizard allows you to move Crystal Reports into Crystal Enterprise. The wizard walks you through the steps of selecting a report or reports and choosing which folder you would like to add them to in Crystal Enterprise, as shown in Figure 23.8. The wizard also allows you to configure database logon information and to configure parameter information before it is copied into the Crystal Enterprise environment. Crystal Reports can also be published to Crystal Enterprise using the Crystal Management Console and via Crystal Reports.

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Figure 23.8. Adding a Crystal report to a Crystal Enterprise folder

Crystal Offline Viewer The Crystal Offline Viewer opens Crystal Reports saved on your local computer. The viewer is similar to the Compiled Report Viewer discussed in Chapter 16, “Deploying Your Report”; it allows saving, printing, sorting, and filtering of the report data. Figure 23.9 displays a sample report in the viewer. Later in the chapter we will examine installing and using the Offline Viewer.

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Figure 23.9. Crystal Offline Viewer

Crystal Web Wizard ePortfolio is a sample web application developed by Crystal Decisions that uses the services of Crystal Enterprise. The Crystal Enterprise services have an Application Programming Interface (API), such as Crystal Reports with the RDC, as we have seen previously. Programmers can use the services and APIs of Crystal Enterprise to develop custom web-reporting applications. The Crystal Web Wizard builds a base Crystal Enterprise web application that can be customized by a developer.

Server Components

The main working components of Crystal Enterprise are Windows services or Unix daemons that run Crystal reports, handle requests from web browsers, manage security, and schedule reports. Crystal Enterprise server components can be installed on Windows, Solaris, and Linux servers. (Linux is supported only for the web connector.) Refer back to Figure 23.1 to refresh your memory of the services.

The services that are implemented in Crystal Enterprise are as follows:

Web Server Crystal Enterprise requires a web server. It will work with following web servers.

  • Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0, 4.0

  • iPlanet Web Server Enterprise Edition 6.0, 4.1 SP8

  • Apache 1.3.20

  • Lotus Domino 5.0.8

Web Connector The web connector is loaded on the web server. The web connector recognizes when a user requests a Crystal Report from Crystal Enterprise, and it communicates and sends Crystal Enterprise requests to the Web Component Server. In a large environment, if multiple copies of the Web Component Server are running, then the web connector will send the requests to the least-busy Web Component Server.

Web Component Server The Web Component Server (WCS) accepts requests from the web connector, processes those requests, and passes them to the appropriate components in the Crystal Enterprise server environment. It will handle report prompts and database logins, and it will convert reports to HTML if the user requests an HTML format.

The WCS can also accept a request for a Crystal Report file (an RPT file) from a web browser address, and it will run and send back the report. This is similar to the Web Reports Server in previous versions of Crystal Reports.

Automated Process Scheduler The Automated Process Scheduler (APS) maintains the Crystal Enterprise database that contains information about the published reports in Crystal Enterprise, users, groups, folders, and security. Other components query the APS database.

The APS components role can be broken down into three main tasks:

Security Manages the database of users and their rights. It also enforces security.

Reports Manages the reports that are in Crystal Enterprise and their location on the server. It communicates with the Job Server to instruct it to run scheduled reports.

Server The APS frequently queries the other server components in Crystal Enterprise and keeps track of their state. As a result, if a component is not busy, the next report request can be handed to that component.

File Repository Server When you publish a report to Crystal Enterprise, that report is placed in the Input File Repository. When you run a report, Crystal Enterprise keeps a copy of it in the Output File Repository. The Output File Repository also keeps historical reports. The File Repository Server is responsible for managing all the reports in the Crystal Enterprise environment.

The default location on the Crystal Enterprise server for the files that Crystal Enterprise manages is C:\Program Files\Crystal Decisions\Enterprise\FileStore. If you look in that directory, you will find a confusing set of directories and subdirectories. If you dig deep enough, you will find Crystal Reports. The good news is you needn’t worry about this directory structure; the APS and the File Repository Server manage all this and provide a simple list of reports that are in Crystal Enterprise. It is best not to touch this directory.

Cache Server When a user requests a report from Crystal Enterprise, the Cache Server checks to see if it has that report page in its cache. If it does, it passes the page back to the WCS to show it to the users. If it is not cached, it passes the request to the Page Server to run the report.

Page Server The Page Server receives requests from the Cache Server for a report page. It then either connects to the database to generate the report or retrieves the last copy of the report that ran, depending on whether the user requested the latest information from the database or the last-run report. The Page Server then creates a special page called an Encapsulated Page Format (EPF) page, which contains a Crystal report page, and passes it to the Cache Server.

Job Server The Job Server runs scheduled reports, as requested by the APS. The Job Server keeps track of the older copies of the report by referring to the APS database and noting the version information.

Event Server In previous versions of Crystal Enterprise, the only way to run a report was by scheduling a time to run it via the APS. In the current version, you can now schedule a report though a file event. The Event Server polls (looks) for a particular file to show up in a directory, and when the file appears, the Event Server notifies the APS to start the report processing.

As you can see, Crystal Enterprise is a sophisticated environment designed to manage Crystal Reports and many users. Let’s take a look at how all the services work together when a user requests a report and when a user schedules a report.

In ePortfolio, when the user requests a report, the request is sent to the web server and then to the web connector. The web connector passes the request to the Web Component Server. The WCS passes the request to the Cache Server. The Cache Server checks to see if it has the requested pages cached. If the requested page is in the cache, the Cache Server checks with the APS to see if the user has rights to view the report. If so, the Cache Server sends the report pages (EPF files) to the WCS. If a cached version is not available, the Cache Server requests the files from the Page Server. The Page Server either retrieves the last copy of the report from the File Repository Server or runs the report against the database.

When the user schedules a report, the request is sent first to the web server and then to the web connector. The web connector passes the request to the Web Component Server. The WCS passes the request to the APS server. The APS server checks to see if the user has rights to schedule the report. If so, the APS server schedules the report to run at the requested time. When that time arrives, the APS passes the request to the Job Server; the Job Server then retrieves the report from the Input File Repository Server and runs the report against the database. After the report is run, the Job Server saves the latest copy of the report to the Output File Repository Server and informs the APS that it has finished. The APS updates the database with the latest report.

Developer Components: Software Development Kit

Just like Crystal Reports, Crystal Enterprise exposes its functionality through a programming interface so developers can use its services in their custom applications. Crystal Enterprise exposes its functionality through Microsoft’s Component Object Model (COM), as well as through a Java interface. Developers can develop either specific client applications or administration applications to manage the Crystal Enterprise environment.

ePortfolio and the Crystal Management Desk are written using the Crystal Enterprise Software Development Kit (SDK). You can customize and change those applications as required.

Note 

As of this writing, Crystal Decisions has not released the Java SDK; it is currently in beta. They expect it to be released in the fourth quarter of 2002. However, the RAS server shipped with Crystal Reports 9 does provide support for Java; see Appendix C for more information.

Tip 

Installation, administration, and development documentation can be found on the \docs folder on the installation CD.

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Mastering Crystal Reports 9
Mastering Crystal Reports 9
ISBN: 0782141730
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 217

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