Crystal Reports 10: The Complete Reference

Overview

One of the most often heard questions asked by users of Crystal Reports 8.5 and earlier ( especially users in larger organizations) was Can I share parts of this report with other users or other reports? While some use of creative copying and pasting to shared word processor or text files might have provided a piecemeal answer to this question, the general response was usually No.

Perhaps the most anticipated new feature of Crystal Reports 9, the repository, took care of this need. The repository (which has been further updated in version 10) allows several types of report objects to be stored in a central database for sharing among other reports and other users. Not only does this greatly reduce the need for repetitive report design steps, it also affords a simple, centralized way of automatically updating common portions of shared reports.

The major repository change in Crystal Reports 10 relates to Crystal Enterprise 10 (often abbreviated as CE ). While Crystal Reports 9 supported a stand-alone repository database, version 10 requires Crystal Enterprise 10 to be installed (the repository is now stored in the CE 10 Crystal Management Server database). While this change will no doubt cause grumbling among organizations that haven t adopted Crystal Enterprise in the past, or that have established existing shared repositories on stand-alone SQL databases, it does provide a certain extra level of central management that you may find helpful.