| As Figure 0.4 showed, the Product family distributed by Business Objects is broken into two major segments, content creation and content delivery. This book is roughly split in two with each section covering one of the topics in great detail. The primary products in the family that are covered in these sections are Crystal Reports (first section) and Crystal Reports Server and BusinessObjects Enterprise (second section). The other complementary and specialized content creation products provided by Business Objects are introduced at the end of the first section of the book. In the content creation section of the book, the following products will be introduced: Crystal Reports version XI The world standard for professional formatted reporting across the largest spectrum of data sources. The Crystal Reports Application Designer benefits from more than 15 years of development and provides an unparalleled combination of powerful functionality and report-design flexibility. Web Intelligence XI A powerful content creation tool designed to provide interactive, ad hoc querying functionality to users across the end-user spectrum. The drag-and-drop end user functionality is intuitive and leverages the best-of-breed semantic layer called Universes. OLAP Intelligence XI (formerly called Crystal Analysis) A powerful content creation tool designed to access OLAP datasources and to provide interactive, speed of thought analytic reporting functionality to users across the end-user spectrum. The drag-and-drop design functionality is intuitive and the unique guided analytic functionality enables creation of content that brings the power of OLAP to the masses. LiveOffice add-ins for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint Excel is the world's most used BI tool. To enable Excel power users to remain in their familiar Excel interface, the Business Objects family includes a new integrated add-in for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. These add-ins provide OLAP Cube exploration, powerful ad hoc report creation, and Report Part extraction from existing Crystal Reports. The new XI (release 2) product add-in enables end users to use existing Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence reports, or semantic layers as a data source for new ad hoc reports. Crystal Reports Explorer Based on the Report Application Server object model and used with BusinessObjects Enterprise, this application provides designers with a subset of Crystal Reports Design capabilities over the Web in a DHTML interface. All the content created in this interface are Crystal Reports files. Universes and Business Views The best-in-breed semantic layer (meta-layer) provided by Business Objects enables you to create a data abstraction layer for your report designers and/or business users. These tools provide dynamic SQL generation, access to multiple datasources, row- and column-level security, and so forth, and are available for use with BusinessObjects Enterprise. Desktop Intelligence XI A powerful, client-installed ad hoc query and reporting tool designed to access existing Universes and to provide interactive, ad hoc reporting functionality to users across the end-user spectrum. The drag-and-drop design functionality is intuitive and leverages the best-of-breed Business Objects semantic layer. This product is the legacy BusinessObjects Report Designer tool (not to be confused with the Universe Designer). Using this tool is not covered in this edition of the book but BusinessObjects Enterprise XI release 2 enables distribution of these legacy reporting objects.
In the content delivery half of the book, the following Crystal Products and SDKs are covered: BusinessObjects Enterprise (formerly Crystal Enterprise) A complete end-to-end BI and Enterprise Reporting Platform that provides the infrastructure to support a range of implementations from small internal projects to global extranet deployments supporting tens of thousands of users. BusinessObjects Enterprise provides a wealth of Enterprise functionality including scheduling, security, auditing, alerting, and so on through several turnkey interfaces. Additionally, the functionality of BusinessObjects Enterprise can be embedded in your custom applications through use of its completely open Java and .NET object models and UI code. Crystal Reports Server New to version XI, Crystal Reports Server provides all the functionality of BusinessObjects Enterprise but is limited to a single multi-CPU server, does not include the ability to distribute nonCrystal Reports content and is aggressively priced for small- and medium-sized businesses. The majority of content in the book discussing BusinessObjects Enterprise also applies to Crystal Reports Server and is a very attractive option for deploying BI and reporting solutions. Crystal Vision New to version XI release 2, Crystal Vision provides a combination of the functionality of Crystal Reports Server with the newly acquired Crystal Exelcius dashboarding functionality. Crystal Reports Engine for .NET Applications The only third-party tool distributed with Visual Studio .NET, this reporting component enables .NET developers to quickly embed limited but powerful reporting functionality into their .NET applications. Crystal Reports Engine for Java Applications Embedded in Borland's JBuilder and other Java IDEs, this reporting component enables Java developers to embed limited but powerful reporting functionality into their Java applications quickly. Report Application Server No longer a separate product on its own, the Report Application Server (formerly called Crystal Enterprise Embedded in v10), provides a multithreaded object model and scalable server on the BusinessObjects Enterprise (and Crystal Reports Server) infrastructure. This server provides both Java and .NET developers with access to the power of the Crystal Reports design and modification APIs for integration into their custom applications. Enterprise Performance Management for BusinessObjects Enterprise (formerly called Application Foundation) A powerful extension to the BusinessObjects Enterprise, this product consists of dashboarding, scorecarding, and advanced analytic functionality. These tools enable you to deliver aggregated visualizations of your key performance metrics and provide drill-down into associated reports (for instance, Crystal Reports). Using these tools is not covered in this edition of the book but they are available from Business Objects for extending your BusinessObjects Enterprise system.
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