Crystal Integration With Bo

8/6/2019 Crystal Integration With Bo

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Formatted Reporting: Crystal Reports Integration

Purpose

Integrating Crystal reports in SAP BW provides you with a wide range of options for creating formatted

reports. Formatted reporting allows you to align report elements to the nearest pixel. It is particularly

suitable for formula-based reports with very restricted analytical functions and for printing reports

easily. The basis for these reports is a Query in Tabular Form. You must specify the options for

interaction when designing the report.

With SAP BW, you also receive templates for formatted reports that relate to Business Content queries

in Business Content. Using the Crystal Enterprise server component, you can publish these reports on

the Web, making them available to your users.

If, in addition to the reports delivered by SAP as Business Content, you want to create your own

formatted reports, you will need the Crystal Reports Designer. You can find additional information in the

Crystal Reports Designer documentation.

You can see the integration of Crystal Reports in the following graphic:


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Integration

Integrating Crystal Reports in BW enhances formatted reporting within Business Explorer.

Features


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The following graphic shows the components of the integrated architecture and its functions in greater

detail.

The tool used to create formatted reports is the Crystal Reports Designer, which is installed on the

client.

The BW Server contains the BW data and queries that form the basis of the formatted report.

The Crystal Connector is the interface between the Crystal Reports Designer and the BW Server. The BW

query metadata is transferred to the Crystal Reports Designer across this interface. The BW query is thebasis of the formatted report.

After creating the report layout, the BW query data is displayed in the preview of the Crystal Reports

Designer.


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Next, the report is saved in a BW role, transferred to the BW server via the Crystal Connector interface

and then stored here.

The interface between the BW server and the Crystal Enterprise server is called the Publishing Interface.

You can only view formatted reports after they have been published on the Crystal Enterprise server.

They are published using the Publishing interface.

The Crystal Enterprise Server stored the formatted reports in rtp format.

During the publishing process, translation into the required languages takes place and the users and BWroles are synchronized.

The reports metadata information is transferred to the Crystal Enterprise server between the BW server

and the Crystal Enterprise server via the data interface. When the user calls up the formatted report, at

the same time the report data is transferred to the Crystal Enterprise server via this interface.

The reports that were stored on the Crystal Enterprise server can be viewed using a Web Browser or via

the SAP Enterprise Portal. The Crystal Enterprise Server also supports single sign on.

reating & Distributing Formatted Reports

Purpose

By integrating Crystal Reports into SAP BW, you can create formatted reports and make them available

to your users.

Process Flow

The following overview shows you the process behind the creation and publishing of a formatted report:


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1. You can use the Crystal Reports Designer to create report definitions for formatted reports. Start

the Crystal Reports Designer and, from the Open BEx dialog, choose a BW query to be the basis of the

formatted report.

You can choose queries you have already created or call up the BEx Query Designer via a jump from the

Crystal Reports Designer, and create a new query from there.

When designing a query, that forms the basis of the formatted report, you should be sure that it does

not contain more characteristics and key figures than are required in the formatted report. If the query

that forms the basis of the formatted report has more characteristics or key figures it can lead to

performance problems because the OLAP processor calculates the whole query.


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Documents

Crystal Integration With Bo