embed cx models in cr 08 whi eng 005104

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WHITE PAPER

EMBEDDING A CRYSTAL XCELSIUSVISUALIZATION INSIDE CRYSTALREPORTS 2008

Author: Takin BabaeiContributors: Henry KamAudience: IT-Professionals

Part 1: Background 1Introduction 1Whats New in Crystal Reports 2008? 2How Do Crystal Reports and Crystal Xcelsius 4.5 Work Together? 2What Is Crystal Xcelsius? 2How Does It Work? 3

Part 2: Building a Crystal Xcelsius What-If Visual Model for Crystal Reports 4Setting Up Your Crystal Reports Data for Crystal Xcelsius 4Building Your Model in Crystal Xcelsius 4Setting Your Crystal Xcelsius Model to Receive Real-Time Crystal ReportsData 6

Part 3: Embedding Your Crystal Xcelsius Model Inside Crystal Reports 7Miscellaneous 8More Information 8About Business Objects 9

PART 1: BACKGROUND

INTRODUCTION

This paper was written for Crystal Reports 2008 users interested in learning more about

using Crystal Xcelsius to create interactive visualizations for their reports. The purpose of

the paper is to give your report authors a deeper understanding of the steps involved in

creating Crystal Xcelsius visualizations and embedding them inside Crystal Reports, so

authors can determine how to utilize Crystal Xcelsius for their own projects.

This whitepaper walks you through: Creating a simple Crystal Xcelsius visual model

Embedding the visual model inside Crystal Reports and linking it to Crystal Reports data

Assumes you have a good understanding of

Crystal Reports

And you already own:

BusinessObjects Xcelsius Enterprise, Crystal Xcelsius Designer, or Crystal Xcelsius

Workgroup

Crystal Reports 2008

BusinessObjects. Embedding a Crystal Xcelsius Visualization Inside Crystal Reports 2008 1


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WHATS NEW IN CRYSTAL REPORTS 2008?

Crystal Reports 2008 provides advanced functionality to help reduce report proliferation and

maintenanceincreasing visualization flexibility and saving time with highly productive design

features, which include:

Xcelsius integration

Flex integration

Flash integration

Report parameter panel

Interactive report viewing

Powerful crosstabs

Flexible pagination

For more information please visit:

http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/crystalreports/features.asp

HOW DO CRYSTAL REPORTS AND CRYSTAL XCELSIUS 4.5WORK TOGETHER?

Visualize the potential outcome of your business decisions with what-if scenario models built

into your report file. Import Xcelsius-generated SWF files into your reports and benefit from

improved design-time integration. IT and developers will design fewer reports to support the

decision-making process. Please note: Xcelsius design tool is not included in Crystal Reports

2008.

View Demo: What-if Analysis

WHAT IS CRYSTAL XCELSIUS?

Crystal Xcelsius is point-and-click data visualization software for creating interactive charts,

graphs, what-if scenario models, and delivering them as part of Crystal Reports, Microsoft

Office, Adobe PDF, and the web.

Crystal Xcelsius enables you to visualize and interact with your business and corporate data.

http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/crystalreports/features.asphttp://www.businessobjects.com/products/crystalxcelsius/default.asphttp://www.businessobjects.com/global/flash/product/catalog/crystalreports/demo_xcelsius_int/xcelsius_integration_viewlet_swf.htmlhttp://www.businessobjects.com/global/flash/product/catalog/crystalreports/demo_xcelsius_int/xcelsius_integration_viewlet_swf.htmlhttp://www.businessobjects.com/products/crystalxcelsius/default.asphttp://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/crystalreports/features.asp


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HOW DOES IT WORK?

Crystal Xcelsius uses a unique combination of Microsoft Excel, as a data modeling tool, and

Macromedia Flash Player, as the rendering engine, to compile dynamic visualizations via its

proprietary Crystal Xcelsius Designer. Within Crystal Xcelsius, Excel is used solely as a data

design tool to help integrate and manipulate data into a format that is easy to bind to and that

is used for common charting and data visualization components.At design time, Excel is used to model and format data while the Crystal Xcelsius Designer is

used to visualize and bind Excel-modeled data to interactive visualizations via the Flash

engine. Once a design is ready to be deployed or previewed, Crystal Xcelsius then does its

magic and compiles the data model and visualization elements into Flash byte code in the

form of a .swf file. This .swf file now contains a virtual representation of your data and its

relationships as defined in the Excel modelas well as all the graphic assets and animations

bound to this data. The .swf file also contains information for any external data connections

that you specified at design time. These data connections can be used to replace the existing

data you designed within Excel with different sets of data at runtime, thus allowing multiple

queries into larger data stores.

Once the Flash movie is running, youre no longer connected to the Excel file in any wayall

data has been virtualized into the Flash byte code or is being fed by dynamic XML feeds. So

you end up with an easy-to-use (Excel) and simple (row/column) metaphor for modeling and

manipulating your data, without any of Excels limitations. Once you begin using this paradigm,

you realize how powerful it isyou can massage data much more quickly with Excel than you

can programmatically.

Note: For more detail, see Crystal Xcelsius for Developers: Technology Overview and

Introduction by Thomas W. Gonzalez (http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/183).

http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/183http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/183


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PART 2: BUILDING A CRYSTALXCELSIUS WHAT-IF VISUAL MODELFOR CRYSTAL REPORTS

SETTING UP YOUR CRYSTAL REPORTS DATA FOR CRYSTALXCELSIUS

Download Sample Files

Use the Export-to-Excel function in Crystal Reports to export your report data to an Excel

spreadsheet. For this example, I have exported the data in db2.mdb to Book1.xls and added

some Excel logic. Lets take a look at the spreadsheet:

The spreadsheet holds the market share data for My Company and three of its competitors.

Using a simple Excel formula, you can perform a simple what-if analysis and predict how

increasing or decreasing sales growth can affect your market share. This can be done by

adjusting the value in the sales growth column. Later, well see how Xcelsius makes this what-if analysis faster and easier.

BUILDING YOUR MODEL IN CRYSTAL XCELSIUS

Step 1: Start your Crystal Xcelsius application. To bring book1.xls inside your Crystal Xcelsius

application, on the toolbar click the Excel icon.

Step 2: In the component window, expand the Charts folder. Drag and drop a pie chart onto

the canvas.

Step3: Expand the Single Value folder. Then, select and expand the Slider folder. Finally, drag

and drop a horizontal slider onto the canvas.

Step 4: Double-click the pie chart and open up its properties.

Step 5: Change the chart title to Market Share.

Step 6: Click the Series radio button. To add a new series, click the plus-sign button.

Step 7: Link the x-values of the chart to the data in the spreadsheet by clicking the select

range icon.

Step 8: Highlight the cells C6:C9 and click OK.

Step 9: In the Category Axis labels section, click the select range icon. In the

spreadsheet, select the cells A6:A9.

http://ftp1.businessobjects.com/webprod/cx/SampleFiles.ziphttp://ftp1.businessobjects.com/webprod/cx/SampleFiles.zip


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Now, your chart should look like this:

Step 10: Double-click the Slider to open up its properties.

Step 11: In the Title section, click the select range icon and select D5 in the spreadsheet.

Step 12: In the Data section, click the select range icon and select D6 in the spreadsheet.

Step 13: Click the Behavior tab and change the increment size to 0.1.

Now, your model should look like this:

Step 14: Click the Preview button. Move the slider to perform your what-if analysis.

Step 15: In the toolbar, click the fit-to-canvas icon to fit the size of the canvas to your

visual model.



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SETTING YOUR CRYSTAL XCELSIUS MODEL TO RECEIVE REAL-TIME CRYSTAL REPORTS DATA

In Crystal Reports 2008, you can pass your report data to any flash objects via FlashVars(a

common way to assign variables for a Flash movie). To setup your Crystal Xcelsius model to

consume Crystal Reprots data in real-time via Flashvars,do the following:

Step 1: Select the path File -> Export Settings.

Step 2: Select the radio button Use Flash Variables.

Step 3: Select CSV Format.

Step 4: Click the button Define Variables.

Step 5: Add a new variable.

Step 6: Change the name to Titles.

Step 5: In the Variables Selection, click the select range icon and highlight the cells A6:A9.

Click OK.

Step 7: Add another variable.

Step 8: Change the name to Values.

Step 9: In the Variables Selection, click the select range icon and highlight the cells

B6:B9. Click OK.

Step 10: Select File -> Export to SWF.

Youre done.



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PART 3: EMBEDDING YOUR CRYSTALXCELSIUS MODEL INSIDE CRYSTALREPORTS

Once youve created your Xcelsius SWF file, you can then embed this into a Crystal report:

Step 1: Start your Crystal Reports 2008 application and open Report1.rpt

Step 2: Create a formula field and call it BuildTitlesString. The formula should contain the

following:

global stringvar TitlesString;

if (TitlesString = "") then

TitlesString := Cstr({Table1.Company Name})

else

TitlesString := TitlesString + "," +

Cstr({Table1.Company Name});

TitlesString;

Step 3: Create a second formula field and call it BuildValuesString. The formula should

contain the following:

global stringvar ValuesString;

if (ValuesString = "") then

ValuesString := Cstr({Table1.Market Share})

else

ValuesString := ValuesString + "," +

Cstr({Table1.Market Share});

ValuesString;

Step 4: From the menu, select Insert -> Flash. Browse and select Model.swf, and drop thisonto the Report Footer section of the report. (You can also insert the flash object with the

toolbar button Insert Flash Object.)

Step 5: Click the flash object on the report to highlight it and then either select from the menu

Format-> Flash Data Expert or right-click the Flash Object and select Flash Data

Expert.

In the Flash Data Binding Expert section, click the plus-sign button (+). Type Titles for the

variable name. To pass the value into the Titles Flash Variable, you have three options:

1. Manually type in the string values you want to pass into the Flash Variable (40

character maximum)

2. Click the drop-down button on the text box to select from an existing Field Object to

pass to the Flash Variable.

3. Click the Formula Builder button beside the text box to create the string to pass the

Flash Variable via formula logic.

In this case, use option 2 and select BuildTitlesString from the drop down.

Click the plus-sign (+) button again and type in Values for the variable name. For value,

select BuildValuesString from the drop-down menu.

To exit the Flash Data Binding Expert, click Okay. You have now successfully embedded an

Xcelsius-created Flash Object into Crystal Reports and bound the Flash Object to data from

the report. If the Flash Object is interactive, double-click on the Flash Object within the Crystal

Reports Preview Tab to set focus to the object. You can then freely click on any interactive

controls in the Flash Object.



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In the example above, the Flash Object was inserted into the Report Footer Section. To insert

the Flash Object anywhere on the report, to continue to pass in the data properly you will need

create the CSV string inside a subreport located in the Report Header and pass the CSV string

to the Flash Object via a shared variable. The following Business Objects knowledgebase

article describes how to use shared variables:

http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=c2007600&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1 0 10030392

To properly support the subreport so it doesnt display in the main report, follow the steps

outlined in this knowledgebase article:

http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&do

cType=kc&externalId=c2017039&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1 0 10030392

MISCELLANEOUS The maximum length of the comma-separated string that can be passed into the Flash

Variable is 65,536 characters.

The Xcelsius SWF may also expect to be passed a multidimensional data range, such as a

3 X 3 grid of values:

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

To pass in data to the Flash Variable properly, the corresponding comma-separated string

would be 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.

Currently, to view Crystal Reports with embedded Flash Objects, you can utilize the Crystal

Reports Preview tab or, within a .NET Web Application, use the Crystal Reports .NET

Webform Report Viewer.

MORE INFORMATION

Crystal Xcelsius Products:

http://www.businessobjects.com/products/crystalxcelsius/default.asp

Crystal Reports 2008:

www.businessobjects.com//crystalreports2008

Technical Support:

http://support.businessobjects.com/

Diamond Community:

http://diamond.businessobjects.com/

http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=c2007600&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1%200%2010030392http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=c2007600&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1%200%2010030392http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=c2017039&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1%200%2010030392http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=c2017039&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1%200%2010030392http://www.businessobjects.com/products/crystalxcelsius/default.asphttp://../Local%20Settings/Temp/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/www.businessobjects.com/crystalreports2008http://support.businessobjects.com/http://diamond.businessobjects.com/http://diamond.businessobjects.com/http://support.businessobjects.com/http://../Local%20Settings/Temp/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/www.businessobjects.com/crystalreports2008http://www.businessobjects.com/products/crystalxcelsius/default.asphttp://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=c2017039&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1%200%2010030392http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=c2017039&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1%200%2010030392http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=c2007600&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1%200%2010030392http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=c2007600&sliceId=&dialogID=10026797&stateId=1%200%2010030392


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ABOUT BUSINESS OBJECTSBusiness Objects has been a pioneer in business intelligence (BI) since the dawn of the

category. Today, as the worlds leading BI software company, Business Objects transforms the

way the world works through intelligent information. The company helps illuminateunderstanding and decision-making at more than 44,000 organizations around the globe.

Through a combination of innovative technology, global consulting and education services, and

the industrys strongest and most diverse partner network, Business Objects enables

companies of all sizes to make transformative business decisions based on intelligent,

accurate, and timely information.

2007 Business Objects. All rights reserved. Business Objects and the Business Objects

logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal Xcelsius, Crystal Decisions, Intelligent

Question, Desktop Intelligence, Crystal Enterprise, Crystal Analysis, Web Intelligence,

RapidMarts, and BusinessQuery are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects

in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be

trademarks of their respective owners.

businessobjects.com

insight.businessobjects.com

2007 Business Objects. All rights reserved. Part # WP3120-A
http://www.businessobjects.com/http://www.businessobjects.com/http://www.businessobjects.com/http://www.businessobjects.com/

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embed cx models in cr 08 whi eng 005104