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This page highlights some of the new features introduced in this
release.
Seagate Crystal Reports 8.0 includes many new
features and enhancements, but the biggest changes are in two important areas:
Reporting Designed For The Web
If you already use Seagate Crystal Reports, deploying reports across the
Web is now as easy as linking reports to your web server, and installing and configuring
the Crystal Web Report Server (included in 8). This hassle-free approach lets you create
your report once and distribute it to any user with a web browser, regardless of their
desktop platform.
Crystal Web Report Server
An ISAPI/NSAPI-compliant component, the new Crystal Web Report Server is
compatible with popular NT web servers including Microsoft Internet Information Server and
Netscape Enterprise Server. Regardless of your choice of Web server technology, Seagate
Crystal Reports 8 works seamlessly within your chosen environment to give you the best
workgroup Web reporting technology available today.
The Crystal Web Report Server
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Thin-Wire Architecture
Even if you’re deploying large reports to your intranet, the
thin-wire architecture of the Crystal Web Report Server ensures superior response times
and helps reduce web traffic. Users pull reports to the browser as desired, a page at a
time, and can even refresh data in an existing report for up-to-the-minute information.
While viewing a report, users can also take advantage of Smart NavigationTM, providing drill
down, search and group trees, to help find report information quickly and intuitively.
Smart NavigationTM
Smart NavigationTM now makes finding information fast and easy, whether
it’s on the desktop or within a browser. Automatically generated group trees provide
an index to your report allowing you to jump directly to the information you need. You can
also drill down for more detail on graphs, group totals and embedded hyperlinks.
Report Viewer in a Browser
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Smart Viewers
To access reports, users can now simply browse to a web page with report
links or a web application with reporting. Seagate Crystal Reports detects their browser
type and automatically returns the report with the compatible Smart Viewer — ActiveX,
Java, HTML frames or plain HTML. Browsers supporting ActiveX or Java display reports in
native Crystal Reports format, providing maximum presentation quality across multiple
platforms.
Web Application Development
We’ve also added the new Crystal Active Server Component, allowing
you to integrate the Crystal Report Engine directly into Active Server Pages (ASPs), and a
Visual InterDev Design-time ActiveX Control wizard to make integrating reports as easy as
pointing and clicking.
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Scalability
The Crystal Web Report Server is ideal for workgroup web reporting for
10-15 concurrent users. If you require a solution for larger groups of users, we recommend
you look at Seagate Crystal Info.You
can run reports created with Seagate Crystal Reports in Seagate Crystal Info, and take
advantage of its multi-tier, scalable architecture and powerful report scheduling
capabilities to deploy large scale web reporting systems.
Application Development
If you’re a professional developer using reports in your
applications, we’ve added some new features we think you’ll appreciate. Seagate
Crystal Reports 8 now makes integrating reports into applications even easier and gives
you flexible choices that help lever your existing skills and development tools. At the
same time, we’ve made it easier for end users to interact with your applications and
quickly find the information they need.
Runtime Preview Window
The smart runtime Preview Window provides the ultimate in
user interaction. When a user clicks on an element in the Preview Window, new event and
call-back support allows your application to present additional details, launch
another report or execute application code. Built in drill down lets users see
additional levels of detail by double-clicking on graphs, group totals or embedded
hyperlinks.
Runtime Preview Window
The Preview Window also includes an automatically generated
group tree summary of your report, printer setup button, variable zoom control, a refresh
button and search capabilities. Enable any or all of these new features, or continue using
the current Preview Window – the choice is yours.
User-Defined Functions in Multiple
Languages
We’ve made it even easier to perform customized
calculations within your reports. Now you can write custom formulas in any programming
language that supports the Component Object Model (COM), including Visual Basic, Visual
C++, Visual J++, and Delphi.
Automation Server
In addition to existing controls and class libraries,
Seagate Crystal Reports 8 now has an Automation Server interface that provides easy to
use, object-oriented access to the entire Crystal Report Engine via over 500 properties, methods and events.
Active Data Driver
Now you can connect to a data source on the fly. The new
Active Data Driver allows you to create a report template that you can use within your VB
application. Then, at runtime, use ADO, RDO or DAO to bind your report to any runtime data
source, including grid data or memory blocks.
New Database Support
Database drivers have been added for Oracle 8, ACT! 3.0,
Informix, Arbor Essbase, and the entire IBM DB/2 family (DB2, DB2/2, DB2/400 and
DB2/6000).
Whether it’s web reporting that leverages
your existing skills, powerful and flexible reporting integrated tightly within your
Windows application, or presentation-quality reports from any database, Seagate Crystal
Reports 8.0 is still the only tool you need! |
