Crystal Reports OLAP Capabilities

You might ask, Where does Crystal Reports fit into all of this? Crystal Reports, obviously, can report on the data stored in the two-dimensional relational database. However, Crystal Reports also allows reporting against many industry-leading OLAP cubes. In fact, Crystal Reports can combine reports that are based on both relational databases and OLAP cubes, all in the same report. You have several choices:

Create a standard report against the relational database the cube is based on.
Create an OLAP-only report based solely on the cube.
Create a standard report against a relational database (either the same database the cube is based on or an entirely different database) and include an OLAP report based on a cube inside the standard report.
Create several different OLAP reports based on the same, or different, cubes. These OLAP-based reports can exist individually, or be included together inside a standard report based on a relational database.

Supported OLAP Systems

While OLAP technology has been somewhat fragmented and proprietary until recently, industry standards are starting to emerge. Crystal Reports will work with leading proprietary OLAP databases, as well as with the emerging Open OLAP standard. Thus, Crystal Reports 10 can create OLAP reports based on the following tools:

Hyperion Essbase
Crystal Holos
IBM DB2 OLAP Server
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 OLAP Services or SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services via OLE DB
OLE DB for OLAP sources (or other Open OLAP sources)
SAP BW
Crystal Analysis Professional (.CAR file)

Tip
The Standard Edition of Crystal Reports 10 does not support OLAP. The OLAP- related functions will be inactive on all screens.

OLAP Report Creation Methods

There are several ways Crystal Reports can be used to report on your OLAP data. While all OLAP reporting in Crystal Reports will be based on the same type of object (the OLAP grid), there are several ways to create it. An OLAP grid is very similar in appearance and functionality to a cross-tab object (discussed in detail in Chapter 11). An OLAP grid displays one or more cube dimensions in rows and columns on the report. As with a cross-tab, you may format individual rows and columns to appear as you wish. You may also easily swap, or pivot, the rows and columns to change the appearance of the OLAP grid. And, you can launch the OLAP Analyzer, an interactive viewer similar to Crystal Decisions Crystal Analysis product, to conduct real-time slice and dice analysis of your OLAP data right from within Crystal Reports.

Creating reports with OLAP cubes is straightforward and very similar to creating reports with regular relational databases. You may either use the OLAP Report Creation Wizard right from the Report Gallery or add an OLAP grid object to a report you ve already created using a standard relational database. The OLAP Wizard leads you step by step through choosing the cube and dimensions you want to use in the row and column of your report. It will then create a report containing an OLAP grid. If you add an OLAP grid object to your report manually, you can make similar choices to that of the OLAP Report Creation Wizard to construct the OLAP grid (this is similar to creating a cross-tab object).