Crystal Reports 2013 vs Crystal Reports for Enterprise, should we get trained on both ?
We are going to implement BI Suite 4.x in the near future, and I'm trying to get a handle on Crystal - versions, training, usage, etc.
This article (from a couple of years ago) has a good discussion of CRE vs CR 2013, while this article doesn't even mention CRE.
As I understand it, CRE was built from scratch as part of SAP'S BO "convergence" of tools upgrade, which was one of the primary goals of BI Suite. And CR 2013 is the legacy tool which is mature and robust, and still has a long shelf life.
But for us just getting Crystal, is there an advantage of one over the other ? Do we need training in both ? And is my newly purchased "CR Reports 2008" now a big door-stop ?
This article (from a couple of years ago) has a good discussion of CRE vs CR 2013, while this article doesn't even mention CRE.
As I understand it, CRE was built from scratch as part of SAP'S BO "convergence" of tools upgrade, which was one of the primary goals of BI Suite. And CR 2013 is the legacy tool which is mature and robust, and still has a long shelf life.
But for us just getting Crystal, is there an advantage of one over the other ? Do we need training in both ? And is my newly purchased "CR Reports 2008" now a big door-stop ?
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>>If you are going to use UNV universes then you will need to use CR 2013.
- but we can use direct connection with CR 2013, right ? (as with CRE).
so here's another consideration -
Crystal Reports requires a programmers mindset, right ? So with CRE or CR 2013 and direct connections, you need a hard-core programmer / Sql person (to be effective)
With CRE --> Unx, you still need a programmer's perspective, but the Sql is going to be built by CRE.
Right now we only use Web Intelligence, so adding in Crystal is a big deal (but we've all concluded we need it).
- but we can use direct connection with CR 2013, right ? (as with CRE).
so here's another consideration -
Crystal Reports requires a programmers mindset, right ? So with CRE or CR 2013 and direct connections, you need a hard-core programmer / Sql person (to be effective)
With CRE --> Unx, you still need a programmer's perspective, but the Sql is going to be built by CRE.
Right now we only use Web Intelligence, so adding in Crystal is a big deal (but we've all concluded we need it).
ASKER
actually, we don't have Crystal yet, I had purchased a CR 2008 book, sorry about not being clear on that.
For our near term, we're just going to implement BI Suite as is - Universe Designer with .unv universes. So my recommendation is going to be to learn CRE, but this only allows direction connection to .unv. But as we eventually move to .Unx, then we'll be good with CRE as far as the tool and the training.
So sounds like I can forgo worrying about CR 2013. Which means my new CR 2008 book probably will be a door-stop.
SAP has courses for both CRE and CR 2013, so if my understanding is correct, we'll just focus on CRE.