Upgrading to Crystal Enterprise
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When deciding whether to upgrade your Report Application Server application to Crystal Enterprise, there are a number of factors to consider. The first is whether the more advanced and expensive versions of Crystal Enterprise meet the needs of your business organization or client.
When faced with the need to expand an existing application’s functionality, it often comes down to a “buy or build” scenario. If the modifications are minor, and there are development resources available to do the work, building your own application may be the best choice. But if you are limited in development resources and the functionality needed is great, it may be better to purchase an existing application that best meets your requirements and then modify it as needed.
In addition to the “buy or build” scenario, there are also a number of technical issues that should be considered when deciding on the upgrade path for a custom web-based reporting system. In particular, there are a number of scenarios in which upgrading to Crystal Enterprise might make the most sense considering the functionality needed. Table 24.6 lists some of the technical advantages to moving to a more full-featured edition of Crystal Enterprise.
Ultimately, whether or not you choose to upgrade to Crystal Enterprise should be based on careful consideration of time, costs, available resources, and your particular business requirements. For a more thorough discussion of Crystal Enterprise and its various features, see Chapter 23.
| Tip | Crystal Decisions has put together a brief white paper that discusses the Report Application Server and how it fits into the Crystal Enterprise product line. You can download this white paper from the Crystal Decisions website at http://www.crystaldecisions.com/products/crystalreports/downloads/cr9_ras.pdf. |
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Report processing | Ability to process larger and more complex reports |
| Scheduling | Ability to schedule when report processing occurs |
| Load balancing | Ability to run report processing on multiple servers, thereby distributing the workload |
| Clustering | Ability to group servers together as one logical unit for increased processing power |
| Fail over | Ability to use other servers as backups in case the main server goes down |
| Report management | Ability to manage a repository of reports including storage and versioning |
| Security | Ability to control user access to reports and operations |
| Analytics | Ability to work with reports generated from Crystal Analysis |
| Ad hoc reporting | Ability to create and modify reports |
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