A perfect and particular reporting system

Knowledge on reporting systems and different point of view on several platforms.

Pros

Excellent reporting system, highly functional especially when combined with the use of SAP Universities (which are in practice a kind of DWH). I particularly like for his different conception of reporting with the areas subdivided into sections as "groups" that comes out a bit from the concept of a paged sheet but different reasons must be made keeping in mind how the group behaves. Surely one of the best reporting systems. Excellent pixel perfect.

Cons

Just its peculiarity of having the sections divided and divisible by "groups", makes the drafting of the report a little more complicated, but it is something that is understood and you can easily manage it by working day after day. For the rest I think he has no particular points to the detriment of his duty and does it well.

Picture perfect reporting tool

We use this for some of the reports where user is looking for a particular report but not for data extract. Well, most of the reporting is done on Universe and WebI, based on the need we also use Crystal reporting. We have multiple options for defining the formula, including mathematical and logical functions. We can use advanced data analytics and visualization in the new version but not yet explored by me.

Pros

Crystal report are canned report, formatted report for printing purpose, like Legal reports, they has to be printed in predefined format, with cell size/cell width or logo etc. each and everything is modifiable). This tool is picture perfect reports since each thing is customizable. You can connect to multiple databases and send the free hand SQL for querying the data

Cons

The security implementation is not good. Since query is done without any middle layer like BO universe, report can bring lot of data, no control on data level security etc. Also, the interface is not as good as Web Intelligence or other reporting components. Look and feel while developing is also not very friendly. Lot of adjustment to be made to make a template. Of late there are no much improvements made and it is costly for a customer to get the report created via a development project.

My review of SAP Crystal Reports

I work with this software every day and personally I think it's a perfect mix between the world of programming and design. It allows us to give a personal touch to everything we do. Perfecting as time goes on. It's how to ride a bike. It makes connections to multiple databases and is very accessible. Very good indeed.

Pros

SAP Crystal Reports is one of the tools I most enjoy working with. Sincerely. It's linked to SQL - we can get our signature on a report that looks vulgar - through code. We were able to do 1001 things, and really have a style. It is an art, combined with the fact that it is programming. It is fabulous. I really love working with Crystal - it's my weakness of how good it is.

Cons

Like any software, if the code is too heavy, or if it is a very complex procedure, crashes a little. But nothing special. Tolerable and irrelevant in the case.

Integral business tool

I've used Crystal reports for 14 years, and I've really been able to adapt it's capabilities to fit our company's needs.

Pros

The flexibility of what I can do with my data is invaluable. I am able to create custom reports to extract necessary information from our databases.

Cons

The newer version of this software does not allow me to open a new report while another report is generating, but it does so more quickly than the old software, so it's a give and take.

Very Versatile on data report, Graphs/Charts can use some improvement

Pros

Allow user to bring data in from many different types of data sources. SQL / HANA / Excel / Access / Universe etc. Very easy to use, all user need to do drag and drop fields on report.

Cons

Some of the graphs have their limitation. Some functions still need improvement. The graphs and charts are somewhat customizable, but functions like changing the size of the markers on line chart or number formatting on different axis are not working properly.