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SAP Crystal

SAP Crystal

Overview

What is SAP Crystal?

SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.

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Recent Reviews

Decent reporting tool

8 out of 10
February 15, 2020
Incentivized
I used SAP Crystal for report visualization. The graphs in the tool are outstanding with strong information telling ability combining with …
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SAP Crystal Review

7 out of 10
January 08, 2020
Incentivized
Crystal is used enterprise-wide for pixel-perfect reporting. We have both on-demand reporting use cases, and scheduled reporting via email …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 29 features
  • Publish to PDF (131)
    10.0
    100%
  • Report sharing and collaboration (118)
    10.0
    100%
  • Report Formatting Templates (115)
    10.0
    100%
  • Formatting capabilities (133)
    10.0
    100%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Upgrade Version to SAP Crystal Reports 2020

$295

On Premise
per single user license

SAP Crystal Reports 2020 64-Bit

$495

On Premise
per single user license

SAP Crystal Reports 2016 32-Bit

$495

On Premise
per single user license

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.sapstore.com/solutions/99013…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Software TRAIL DEMO SAP Crystal Reports 2013

YouTube

SAP Crystal Dashboard Design - Demo video

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

9.3
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

9.6
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

9.4
Avg 8.4

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.6
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8.4
Avg 8.0

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

7
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is SAP Crystal?

SAP Crystal Reports and SAP Crystal Server are designed to help users create pixel-perfect, richly formatted, and dynamic reports from virtually any data source – delivered in dozens of export formats, in up to 24 languages. SAP Crystal Reports is a production reporting tool designed to turn almost any data source into interactive, actionable information that can be accessed offline or online, from applications, portals and mobile devices. SAP Crystal Server enables self-service access to reports, dashboards, and data exploration within a secure infrastructure.

SAP Crystal Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: Snapshot of External Data
  • Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
  • Supported: ROLAP (SQL-layer querying)
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
  • Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
  • Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: Postgres
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: ODBC
  • Supported: EMC Greenplum
  • Supported: HP Vertica
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Teradata
  • Supported: Salesforce
  • Supported: SAP

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
  • Supported: Delivery to Remote Servers

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features

  • Supported: Javascript API
  • Supported: Java API
  • Supported: Themeable User Interface (UI)
  • Supported: Customizable Platform (Open Source)

SAP Crystal Screenshots

Screenshot of Pixel-perfect reporting solutionScreenshot of Refresh with a clickScreenshot of Build pixel-perfect documentsScreenshot of Connect to all data sourcesScreenshot of Use drag and dropScreenshot of Build interactive reportsScreenshot of Export to popular formats

SAP Crystal Videos

SAP Crystal Solutions: The Mobile Worker Use Case
SAP Crystal Solutions: Identify and Eliminate Clutter in Your Visualizations
SAP Crystal Solutions: How to Buy SAP Crystal Reports Digitally

SAP Crystal Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesGlobal
Supported LanguagesEnglish, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Thai, Czech, Hungarian, Slovakian, Turkish, Romanian, Slovenian

Frequently Asked Questions

SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.

Windward Core, TIBCO Jaspersoft, and Jet Reports are common alternatives for SAP Crystal.

Reviewers rate Customizable dashboards and Report Formatting Templates and Drill-down analysis highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of SAP Crystal are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(558)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(126-150 of 156)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
May 05, 2016

Mixed opinion

Kevin Hicks, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use it to run line of business reports. The reports do give insight, but the information is static and becomes old after a report is run. Some reports we use have improved processes which have been great in those cases.
  • Can consolidate multiple processes using a single report.
  • Giving snapshot info.
  • Can be used with many different sources of data.
  • Generally static reports.
  • Requires a pretty skilled worker to create and manage reports.
  • Not straight-forward to integrate with other applications.
Real time drill down is not great from UX and UI experience.
Paul Jennings | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been using Crystal Reports for development of reports for over a decade. We use it to build reports into our database products such as EasyPay and Rock Loans. We also develop a wide range of payroll, HR, accounting and other management reports for businesses based in Gibraltar. It's a great tool for the easy development of WYSIWYG reports, which integrates with a wide range of data sources. We recommend it to all the businesses we work with.
  • Easy development of reports in a visual designer
  • Integrates with a wide range of data sources
  • Comprehensive range of features for building reports
  • Distribution of Crystal Reports runtime and installation files with your own software development is not always an easy/smooth process
  • SAP website is difficult to navigate for new information, support, product updates and related downloads
SAP Crystal Reports is very useful when you wish to roll out reports to an organisation, and provide "power users" with the ability to tailor or create their own reports. These users are able to create reports to address business needs with minimal programming knowledge.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Crystal Reports to integrate reporting with our advertising software. It is used across our company nationwide in our advertising departments. It allows us to create reports that all markets can use or custom reports for individual markets. We then load the reports into our advertising software that can then be used for multiple applications.
  • I like the ability to use SQL queries as a data source.
  • My users really like the cascading parameters that Crystal Reports allows.
  • Crystal Reports is a fairly intuitive reporting platform.
  • When moving an existing report to a different database connection the interface to do this not very user friendly.
  • This may sound minor but it is a big deal for me. In the formula editor window I would like to be able to use my mouse's wheel to move up and down in the window (currently it doesn't recognize the mouse wheel).
In my experience, when needing a report that can act as a pivot table, it is somewhat lacking.
Celeste Fredrickson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a small financial industry therefore we are not using SAP Crystal Reports on a daily basis, but at least monthly we use the program to pull various reports for loan, and marketing, etc. When first using the program I was confused, but that was only because I never had any training on it. Once I went to a day training and I have learned to love this program! It has helped immensely in our marketing department as we pull reports for specific target groups. It has helped us be more efficient in time spent on pulling and organizing reports.
  • Design Mode. Before Crystal Reports I would pull information then transfer it to Excel to design and organize the report how I needed it. Since Crystal Report has a design mode I am able to pull, organize, and style my report all on the same program, including graphs and charts.
  • Auto Filled Letters. I have to send various letters and notices out to members and thanks to Crystal Reports I can send out these letters I've designed and have it auto fill all the member's information including their address, current balance, and more. It saves me from making mistakes I could make if I were filling in the letters myself, and is a huge time saver.
  • Starting a report is the hardest thing for me because of the endless tables I'm given to choose from. I know there is a guide somewhere that specifies what information you will find in each table, but I haven't yet used it. If there was a section of most commonly used tables then it would be great.
In most marketing situations it is a great tool to use.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Crystal Reports is used across the whole organization. It brings data to the hands of decision makers.
  • Works well with SQL data sources. I can connect to a lot of different data sources, from MS SQL Server to MySQL and Oracle.
  • Overall, Crystal Reports is a good value. You can't do it all, but if you know your way around it you can achieve your goals.
  • Export to PDF functions well. This is a great function when creating reports to be emailed.
  • Drawing tools need updating. For example, you can't create diagonal lines? It's 2016! Also using images is cumbersome and it does not have the best resolution.
  • Would be nice to see more barcode or QR code integration out of the box.
  • Saving footer space for every page regarding of the section height is challenging. Consider enabling more control for section management and print.
  • Would be nice to have a section to manage global variables. Why do I need to define these every time?
Working with databases is one of the strongest points of Crystal Reports. Unfortunately, the licensing options are not oriented towards small businesses. It would be great to have a limited version for companies that don't run a lot of reports.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Crystal Reports is used by our software developer for integration into our website for auto generated reports. I purchased a copy of Crystal Reports to be able to visually customize the end users' experience and give our reports a current look and feel.
  • It allows for customization to continuously suit our needs over 10 years after integration.
  • The API documentation was solid and allowed very easy integration by our developers.
  • Compatibility with our varying Windows operating systems was no problem at all.
  • The UI is a little out-dated and clunky.
  • Had a hard time finding resources to answer questions that weren't very basic. Had to use a lot of third party resources.
  • Would love to see better built in features for visual styles instead of relying mostly on code.
Not in our implementation so far. It's served its purpose well but not overly so.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Crystal Reports within our LIMS to create reports and COAs. We are using it currently in operations.
  • Nice looking reports, clean and professional
  • Flexibility to build reports
  • None that I can think of simply because I haven't been given the ability to explore the options. Our templates are given to us from our corporate office.
Douglas Barbin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Crystal Reports to create custom reports for several of our clients. Typically, we are in a scenario where the client is using some other software that does not provide reporting that is robust enough for their business needs. We also do some in house reporting with Crystal Reports, as it is the reporting engine that our CRM software uses.
  • Crystal Reports is great for easily creating simple reports.
  • Crystal Reports helps us to speed up report development.
  • Crystal Reports allows non-technical users to create some of the reports they need.
  • The user interface can be a bit cluttered sometimes.
  • The reports are saved in a binary file format and therefore unable to be "diffed" or looked at using source control tools.
It is particularly well suited for quickly writing simple reports, even if the user does not have a whole lot of technical knowledge or experience. It is somewhat less appropriate for more complex reports, although it does allow a wide range of formatting options for the report and the data contained therein.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal Reports has helped us in taking the data we have and making reports quickly that are formatted for a professional look. We were able to link the database directly and make the reporting process easier for employees who do not have any background with SQL. The power of SQL with the simplicity for non SQL savvy employees was helpful for us. A few of us took online training courses and then after that we have had other employees mirror us as we use SAP Crystal Reports to learn how to use it as well as helping us better learn since teaching how to do something tends to help expand the understanding of it to then be able teach it.
  • Create professional looking reports easily
  • Generate invoices and estimates for clients
  • Access more data in reports than previously we used
  • Requires training video - Not easy to just learn by trail
  • The snapping for drag and drop does not always work properly
  • It can run slower at times than we would like
They offer the 30 day trial so you can see how it will work for your needs.
Sunny Grewal | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We build templates for our clients for our Commercial Off The Shelve (COTS) web application and use ODBC connection to connect to the database. The templates are mostly forms and reports used by the organization's industrial security department. These reports can be presented to DSS or higher management. The government form templates can be shared across other government agencies.
  • Design interface is good. Better than Jasper Reports.
  • Sorting and Grouping is very easy.
  • Slightly similar to old MS Office interface for choosing font types and colors, etc.
  • The design studio needs to be more flexible.
  • The crystal functions need to be a little bit more comprehensive.
  • We should be able to build and store Crystal functions of our own for future use rather than building them per report.
Crystal Reports is well suited within an organization if you need to deliver static data such employee roster information, clearance information, and contract information. The graphs don't work too well.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Crystal Reports was used to deliver reports to clients about data relating to transportation systems. The reports were typically static in format, but numerous and regular, and were good candidates for automation. Each system had a large number of data points to report on. It was implemented by our organization, on behalf of our clients.
  • Report scheduling - flexibility and consistency in delivery
  • Report visualization - simple but effective.
  • Report delivery - reliable
  • Ease of set-up - engineering took a while to hook it up
  • Configuration - generally, the reports were not something folks could actually go in and modify
It is well suited in situations where the set-up is being done by a different party than the group receiving the reports. It is not appropriate for ad hoc analysis or reports for public presentation.
February 23, 2016

Crystal Reports Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal Reports shows database information in a much simpler and easier to understand format than just looking at standard reports or the data sheets. We are able to customize with SQL queries to generate the data we need for reports for presentations. It works great with several of our data sources and is not constrained with just one database setting or format.
  • Works with many database formats
  • Great web intergation
  • Good support for 3rd party features
  • More support and training online
  • Make setup faster and easier to do
  • Forumlas made easier
It works well and it is very expansive in the database options for data sources.
Nathan Patrick Taylor | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently using SAP Crystal Reports as one of several reporting tools utilized by our business intelligence (BI) department. The reports developed by the BI team are accessed by various departments within the organization from operations to finance and marketing. Crystal Reports is our primary "push" reporting tool. This means that we schedule most of our Crystal Reports and output them to several formats.
  • Crystal Reports is easy for the BI team to learn and use. A team can get up and running quickly, even with very little reporting experience.
  • Individual application licenses are not very expensive compared to other similar tools.
  • We purchased a third-party tool that allows us to schedule our Crystal Reports. There a lot of support for such tools which makes our "push" reporting concept easy to implement.
  • Reports can be output to a number of formats including PDF, HTML, Word, and others. These report can then be scheduled and delivered to shared network drives and via e-mail. The schedule we use even has an encryption feature to password protect files.
  • One of the greatest strengths of Crystal Reports is the formula editor which allows for deep customization of reports. Those familiar with VBA will see some resemblances to how VBA works in programs like Excel.
  • Another strength is the ability to group data in a report and have those groups export as bookmarks in a PDF. For push reporting this is an ideal feature that I find hard to replicate in other tools.
  • The graphics capabilities of Crystal Reports is a bit limited and dated. The program could use a visual overhaul.
  • Although the program is easy to learn, mastering some of the fine details can be a bit challenging with the way SAP labels certain features. Often times I find myself scouring the Internet for solutions to problems that are very easy to solve in other reporting tools.
  • Unless you make the SAP Crystal Report Viewer (a separate app) available to all users, the report remains somewhat static in the sense that users can't select different criteria and re-run the report on the fly.
  • Working with stored procedures in SQL Server is a bit clunky, but it does work.
  • Charting features are time consuming to develop and the intelligence built in to automatic chart layout is lacking.
We use several different reporting tools and, by far, the most well suited feature is the ability to build reports to a specific format and schedule them for release. The grouping and custom coding features in the formula editor allow developers to create reports that match user needs perfectly.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Crystal Reports is the reporting software that comes integrated with our HRIS system (ViP from DLGL). Because of this integration, we use the canned (vendor supplied) reports that come with ViP as well as creating custom reports for HR, Payroll, and Benefits. These reports get pushed out through a Windows administrative client as well through the web-based employee & manager portals.
  • Crystal Reports is extremely versatile in its ability to handle multiple data sources; it can reference any ODBC source (of course) as well as embedding SQL that returns the results of a query without exposing the data source directly (called "COMMANDS").
  • Crystal Reports also excels at offering scripted/macro/automation/programming control over almost every aspect of the result-set including formatting. Sometimes it is easier to have the database do all the data manipulation (but that can require more advanced SQL skills) and sometimes it's easier to have the client programmatically iterate over the result set before the data is presented to the user. Crystal Reports essentially provides break-outs for all aspects of data manipulation and presentation.
  • Crystal Reports offers two language choices for automation: Javascript-like syntax and VB-like syntax.
  • The Crystal Reports designer is also very robust; not perfect, it will fail once in a while, but not very often.
  • The built-in Help is reasonably helpful; you can often find the answer to a question within the supplied Help. Within the expression editor, the accuracy of the context-sensitive help is also good.
  • The biggest problem with Crystal Reports comes from the complexity of the product -- not how advanced the product is, but how many moving parts there are and how many ways you can use it. For anyone other than an advanced Crystal Reports user (and even for them) you will go crazy trying to find things. It's probably fair to say that 80% of the actions you wish to perform are not intuitive or obvious. You can go *crazy* trying to find, for example, where a sub-report has been embedded within an existing report, or what override is overriding an override that's enabled but hidden (or vice versa). This means that Crystal Reports has a high learning curve and is very inefficient for casual use.
  • Crystal Reports is old. OLD OLD OLD. It was already old when it was created in 1991 and has been owned by so many companies, it's hard to keep track (Crystal Services, Seagate, Fuji ?, Business Objects, and now SAP) . The report designer looks and works like an old Windows application, because it is an old Windows application. It has that nasty, pinched feel of jaggy console fonts, cramped data-entry fields, ham-fisted mouse tracking, and a lot of modal dialog-box functionality. So it's not a pleasure to use; it's a beat-up farm tractor that you know will start on cold winter morning, but you're still not looking forward to slinging yourself up onto that icy-cold metal seat. At the end-of-the-day, what this really means is that with all its changing corporate ownership, it's a neglected product that has never kept pace with the operating system that hosts it. New reporting functionality does get bolted on as vendors struggle to keep pace with trends, but don't confuse that with overall improvement in the underlying software.
  • If there was one thing I could change about Crystal Reports it would be it's inability to place precise guidelines (those snap-to lines for object alignment). Crystal Reports has a grid layout measure limited to 3 decimal places, so a 1/8" grid is fine at 0.125"; but a 1/16" grid will be rounded & truncated (0.0625 => 0.063) so your column spacing will start to wander by the time you get to the right-most columns. And because Crystal Reports is using imperial measures internally, if you attempt to use metric measure, most of your values will be rounded (0.1cm becomes 0.101cm, 0.05cm becomes 0.049cm, etc.) and again your column spacing will shift across the page. Although this isn't a show-stopper for anyone, it's still really crappy functionality for a report-writer and is indicative of the kind of attention this software has received over its 24+ years of rotating-door ownership.
  • As a general statement, Crystal Reports desktop designer has next-to-no capability for managing enterprise-level change control: there is no easy way to find which of your reports uses a particular data source, there are no tools for managing revisions. Unless you are very careful, when you swap out one data source for another, all of your fields will be wiped from your report unless the new data source is basically a production-ready clone of your previous data source. You can avoid a lot of problems by creating front-end expressions for all your expected data elements; but that's something the software should do for you, not something you should have to manually craft each time.
  • Crystal Reports designer is very click-type-drag-click-escape-drag-right-click-double-click-type intensive. Your hands and fingers are in constant, often tedious, motion the whole time. Many layout activities should be more automated; some actions (like typing CTRL-S to Save in the Expression Editor also closes the editor window) need to be rethought.
  • The same old Windows-y feel extends to their run-time viewer that gets pushed out to all users who need to view Crystal Reports via the web. It's functional but very sad.
  • SAP has announced Crystal Reports 2013; it is Crystal Reports 2011 without support for XP. But since my "Check for Updates..." in Crystal Reports 2011 does nothing and the Crystal Reports 2013 evaluation setup program fails on launch, the awesomeness of this latest installment in the Crystal Reports legacy will have to be left to our imaginations.
In the world of enterprise report designers, Cognos and Crystal Reports both fit the bill. If your organization is already using one, there's your answer, there isn't a better one. If you are responsible for selecting one or the other for your organization, work with your IT infrastructure people to see if one reporting package fits your enterprise configuration better than the other. Otherwise it will probably come down to how heavily you need the advanced analytics; that functionality is evolving all the time and you can just focus on which of those features appeals to you more.
Samantha Cruff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Simplifies report layouts. As a previous user of MS Query, Crystal Reports makes it easier to export information out of the database and into a usable format.
  • Integrates with Microsoft Office. Exporting reports is extremely simple, and you can maintain grouping as well.
  • Develops formulas without having SQL background. The filter tool makes creating formulas simple, and the formula editor tool makes editing easy.
  • Tool location. Some of the tools are not easy to find, causing frustration when you cannot find what you're looking for.
  • Linking. Link errors often produce a blank report and trial and error are necessary to actually obtain results. It would be nice if there was a warning that data type does not match for current database links.
Is Crystal Reports necessary to retrieve data from my database? Does my database integrate easily with Crystal Reports? What are any potential issues I may have integrating with Crystal Reports? With another product? What are the benefits of using Crystal Reports? The disadvantages? What are the costs involved? Would a cheaper product perform comparably?
April 09, 2015

Crystal Reports 2008

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Users can schedule or view the reports through a secure web portal.
  • It can be used with Xcelsius (dashboard design tool).
  • It can be exported to different formats.
  • It needs Crystal Reports Server / Business Objects Enterprise to share reports over the web.
  • Licensing fee is high for big companies.
It is one of the popular reporting tools and it is easy to learn. It works with different databases.
Christian Fredrickson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Crystal Reports is being used by many business lines as the standard reporting tool for canned reports. It provides many users with a tool get the canned data from many different data-warehouses and systems. I would say it is a complex powerful report development tool. Users do face a steep learning curve with this tool. This is because it has many "hidden features" and best practices. Many point back to the database and are not the best such as subreports.
  • Good for canned reports
  • Powerful multiple database support
  • Pretty much the standard tool
  • Subreports
  • Many features
  • Users need better training to use
Crystal Reports is best used with a skilled DBA who can help write good stored procedures/views to use under the reports.
David Deitch | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • 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.
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.
Stephanie Huber | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.1 is the tool of choice for pixel perfect, highly formatted reports. As of the release of Crystal Reports for Enterprise for 4.1, it supports SQL commands as a data source and it can connect to relational data sources, SAP BEx queries via the BICS connectivity as well as BusinessObjects UNX universes, which is the semantic layer that BusinessObjects offers to sit between the data source and the front end reporting tools. The difference between this tool and other reporting tools offered by SAP, such as WebIntelligence, is that Crystal is record and section oriented. It's designed to return a single dataset as opposed to blocks of data at different levels of aggregation. However, if you wan to include an additional dataset in the same report, a subreport can be imported into the main report. Subreports can be linked to the data in the main report or it can be unlinked and return an completely unrelated dataset. The linking is handled when importing the subreport into the main report. Crystal can also handle very large volumes of data very well as its processing engines are optimized to do so. Although Crystal is known to produce static reports, interactivity can easily be added with the use of parameters. Parameters are prompts to the end user which can be used to filter datasets, change the database field that report data is grouped on, modify a threshold used for conditional formatting, or conditionally show or suppress sections to produce entirely different layouts of the same report. Where Crystal really shines is in its capacity to produce truly pixel perfect reports that can adhere to the most rigorous of corporate formatting standards. I have yet to be on a project where I could not use Crystal to achieve end user reporting requirements. Albeit we may have gotten crafty with the solution as the requirement was not supported out of the box, but there is always a way. I am confident to recommend this tool to organizations that require highly formatted reports, make heavy use of BusinessObjects publications for report bursting to end users, and have a development team that understands basic relational database concepts. Also, SAP has Crystal Reports in their roadmap so support and R&D into this tool is not going away any time soon, giving me more confidence in this already powerful tool.
  • Formatting.
  • Ability to dynamically change the report layout via parameters.
  • Handle large volumes of data.
  • Provides the best connectivity with SAP datasource as well as relational datasource.
  • Good stability when used in BusinessObjects publications for report bursting to end users.
  • A report can connect to other BusinessObjects content via OpenDocument URLs.
  • You cannot freeze panes in the Crystal Reports viewer.
  • There is no lightweight web based version of the tool for development; it is a local installation application and all changes must be sent to the development team.
  • The version of Crystal must stay in sync with your version of BusinessObjects otherwise flakiness and product instability may occur.
If you need free standing blocks of data at different levels of aggregation, Crystal is not your tool. If the end user want to slice and dice the data on the fly, Crystal is not your tool. If you want to produce beautiful looking reports that support limited online interactivity and can be bursted to large populations, Crystal is your tool.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Crystal Reports is a reporting tool that is utilized by numerous departments across our organization. Our department, in particular, uses Crystal Reports to develop reports from data in the numerous systems that we support. Our systems run on several types of databases, such as Oracle, SQL and Sybase, to name a few. Using Crystal Reports, we are able to quickly and easily develop reports and house them in our InfoView Reports Server, for easy access by our clients.
  • It is incredibly easy to design a report with minimal database experience. The system is very intuitive and it makes presenting the information you need to a breeze.
  • The system has a terrific interface for linking different tables together.
  • The ability to create parameters quickly and easily is a huge help. Having that sort of interactivity within a report has been received very well by our users.
  • Creating subreports and having the ability to drill down on data makes the reports even more interactive and allows the designer to get creative with the types of reports they can create.
  • Inserting charts into a report is very straightforward and easy to use.
  • I think that the design view could be a little cleaner. Sometimes it is difficult moving some of the sections up and down
  • It would be nice if the Text Objects would automatically adjust to the size of the text entered, so we do not have to manually size each text object. Very time consuming.
  • A more intuitive interface for linking databases and database tables would be helpful for those that are new to databases and report writing.
From my personal experience, I prefer Crystal Reports to all other report writers I have tried. I just like how easy it is to develop a report to meet your needs with its WYSIWYG style. When selecting a product, I would ask that the company walk-through all that the system can do, because this is where we were truly sold on Crystal Reports. Also, the fact that we have the InfoView option as well, makes this a product that both our designers and clients love.
September 15, 2014

Crystal Decisions

Nicole Frigo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Crystal reports was used as an ODBC connector and user interface for many Hotels to report on their transaction level details and other historical and active database records.
  • Quickly query data from multiple tables
  • Ability to drill down into the lowest level details of transactions and records
  • Simple setup and UI with ability to save dictionaries, customized based on the tables being accessed
  • Although it is a simple quick way to report on multiple records it doesn't have a great graphical interface for the reports. It is pretty much just the raw data you get back.
  • The dictionaries are great but they need to be set up and maintained. If they are not, many times tables and fields are displayed in their code name. This is hard to work with if you are not familiar with database table structure and naming conventions
  • The default language is Crystal and while it is very easy for beginners it does not apply or translate into any other reporting or coding language. There is an option to use basic SQL.
I think Crystal Reports is a great tool, relatively simple to deploy, and cost effective. If you are looking for a tool to use as a UI, that can quickly turn out simple reports for auditing and tying back data, it is a good solid option. Since it connects to your database it is flexible enough to handle changes that in other tools would impact performance structure.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
The IT Department used Crystal Reports to produce reports or the accounting department.
  • Very powerful.
  • Very versatile.
  • Crystal Reports is the Cadillac of reporting suites. very mature very stable.
  • Crystal Reports at times is like using a mac truck to deliver your solution.
  • Crystal Reports very strengths are also its weaknesses it seems like its stable and see no room to grow or improve.
  • There were time were it felt like you had to jump through various hoops to do very simple things, where newer suites seem to be built with simplicity in mind.
The only scenario in which I would not recommend Crystal is one in which the price tag did not make sense for the company. For instance a small company that needs reporting but not published. Crystal might not be for everyone but it still holds the place as the top of the line reporting suites out there.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Crystal Reports is used in across the whole organization. It is a powerful tool that addresses many business problems in our organization. I use it for reports that allow me to manage product inventory and pricing, as well as analyze sales reports and success of marketing promotions.
  • Very flexible. I can use it for a range of things, from looking at sales performance, inventory management and pulling mailing lists from various databases for print and email campaigns.
  • Powerful tool for leveraging company data to improve sales performance.
  • Allows me to pull hundreds of thousands of customer records at one time.
  • Requires a fair amount of training to use.
  • It's not intuitive at first. It takes a lot of time to get used to using.
I would say it's great for companies who use a lot of data and need flexibility to leverage that data. I would ask how much data the company has. If there's not a lot of data, a product that is a little easier to get up and running (Access, Excel, etc.).
Troy Pawleska | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Easy to use.
  • Can embed SQL into the reports.
  • Very visual.
  • It doesn't have a wizard for everything - you may need coding experience.
The best reporting tool I've used, compared to SQL Reporting or MRI. I would suggest going through Crystal training.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Very easy to use, much of the functionality is self explanatory.
  • Easy to train others on.
  • Beautiful graphical interface.
  • The users I support wish that establishing connections to the DB were a bit easier to figure out without much support.
  • Error messages could be more specific.
Jump right in and grab as many resources as possible to learn. Someone who can easily pick up new applications and has the willingness to learn is perfect for this kind of tool.
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