Web Reporting Features

Web Reporting Features

As applications begin to take advantage of the Web for information distribution and the options increase so do the terms that we have to keep up with. This section provides some basic explanations to the terms and technology used in this guide.

Applying Web Reporting

There are dozens of ways you can use Web Reporting to solve existing problems you may have with information access. Some examples of how Web reporting can help you:

Implement cost-effective access to current inventory or order status reports for both central and regional offices

Create added value for premium customers by giving them the ability to check their orders or invoices on-line

Enable salespeople in regional or home offices to review period-to-date sales performance specific to their accounts

Satisfy a business manager’s needs for user-friendly, on-demand access to key reports, even outside of normal office hours

Provide mobile business users with the reach to create ad hoc queries against centralized data and then share the results with other members of their team.

Static File Export, Dynamic & Ad Hoc Web Reporting
It is important to note the different methods of interacting with reporting information over the Web. The descriptions that follow outline these methods.

Static file export	Provides a simple way to distribute reports to remote users electronically. Exported reports are usually static—they represent a snapshot in time because they do not have live access to the data source. Reports exported in HTML format can be viewed in a browser by a user thousands of miles away, but they are still just static views.
Dynamic Web Reporting	More than just another way to distribute reports. The reports you view can be both live and interactive—live because the report viewer lets users refresh reports against live data, and interactive because remote users can still exploit the navigation and drill down capabilities of Seagate Crystal Reports.
Ad Hoc Web reporting	Provided with the new Crystal Query Java application. This represents a 3^rd stage in information analysis over the Web. This level of interaction includes the creation of queries, selection of fields, sort orders and groupings via a Web browser. You can effectively extend ad hoc desktop reporting to anyone, anywhere your intranet can reach.

General Features

Seagate Crystal Reports 7 is designed to offer superior Web Reporting functionality. It’s also designed to build on your existing development skills. Seagate Crystal Reports offers the following technological advantages.

Thin-wire Architecture

Even when deploying large reports for your intranet, the thin-wire architecture of the Crystal Web Reports Server ensures superior response times and helps reduce web traffic. Page-on-demand access to reports lets users download only the specific pages of a report which they need to see; with optional dynamic refresh, you can give users more control over reports by turning on or off the capability to rerun reports on demand for up-to-the-minute information.

Smart Navigation

Rather than having to page through an entire report, users can quickly navigate to specific details via a new page-on-demand interface that presents a summary of the report. They can pull reports from the web server to the browser, one page at a time, then drill down for more detail on graphs, group totals, and embedded hyperlinks. Automatically generated group trees provide an index to reports so users can quickly jump, with a single mouse click, to the section of the report they need to analyze.

Smart Viewers

Seagate Crystal Reports 7 makes use of Smart Viewers—thin-client add-ins that enable you to add functionality to web reports without the complexity of application setup on client desktops. When users browse to a page containing reports, Seagate Crystal Reports detects their browser type and automatically returns the report with the appropriate Smart Viewer technology—ActiveX, Java, Java Bean, HTML frames, or plain HTML.

Browsers supporting ActiveX or Java display reports in native Crystal Reports format, in virtually the same manner as the Runtime Preview Window does for desktop users. This enables users to work with the information within their browser in much the same manner as they might if it were in the Crystal Reports preview window. Each Smart Viewer provides its own level of reporting functionality. See the chart below for an overview:

	Viewers
Feature	Active X	Java	Java Bean	HTML Frame	HTML Page
View charts (Graphs)
View embedded maps
Includes Smart Navigation Tree
Drill down on summarized data
Drill down on charts & maps
Export to Word, Excel, RTF, RPT
Search for specific data values
View subreports
Drill down with On demand subreports

Crystal Web Report Server

A browser and its web server counterpart are not equipped to locate reports on a network, manage user data requests, and process queries. Additional backend components are required. In the case of Seagate Crystal Reports that backend is called the Crystal Web Report Server. The Crystal Web Report Server performs two main tasks, managing user report demands and allocating report output. This is accomplished through the use of a report cache and mapping design that track user requests by report job.

Components

The Crystal Web Report Server is compliant with Microsoft IIS and Netscape web servers or Common Gate Way Interface (CGI) compliant web servers. Crystal Web Report Server Extensions (CRWEB.DLL & CRWEB.EXE) are installed on the web server during the Seagate Crystal Reports web installation. These extensions act as a communications link between the web server and the Crystal Web Report Server, which is, itself comprised of components. The Crystal Web Report Server components include the Page Server (CRPGSVR.EXE), and Image Server (CRIMGSVR.EXE) which manage the actual processing and publishing of report requests back to the host web server for use on a browser.

Process Flow

As report requests are received by the Crystal Web Report Server, the Page Server determines if a report request output already exists. Once this has been determined it proceeds to either distribute the current output held in cache or enlist the Crystal Reports Print Engine to process the request against the source database. If the desired report is held in cache, the first page of the report with summary information and Smart Navigation control is sent out to the requesting user within the appropriate Smart Viewer. In the case of the latter, where it is not held in the cache, the Crystal Report Print Engine accesses the report file, retrieves any necessary data, and processes the report. The resulting file is placed in the cache and a message is sent to the Crystal Web Report Server indicating that the process is complete. These report files are now available to subsequent users who have the same requests. This dramatically reduces the amount of processing on the database and provides users with the fastest possible results. Please refer to System Architecture in this chapter for a full list of the Web components.

The Crystal Web Report Server returns a default Smart Viewer based on the browser installed on the client machine. In most cases alternative viewers can also be used. Please see the chart below:

Client Side Browser	Default Viewer Returned	Other Optional Viewers
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, 4.0	ActiveX	Java, HTML Page, HTML Frame
Netscape Navigator 2.X, 3.X, 4.X (32 bit)	Java	HTML Frame, HTML Page
Netscape Navigator 4.X (16 bit)	HTML Frame	Java, HTML Frame, HTML Page
Netscape Navigator 3.X (16 bit)	HTML Frame	HTML Frame, HTML Page
Netscape Navigator 2.X (16 bit)	HTML Page	HTML Frame, HTML Page
Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0	HTML Page	HTML Page
Sun Hot Java Browser	Java	HTML Frame, HTML Page
Other Browsers	HTML Page	HTML Page

Different viewers provide different levels of functionality. Selection of a viewer based on its Web reports functionality can be done using this chart.

Ad Hoc Web Query

In addition to the Smart Viewers for analyzing predefined reports, Seagate Crystal Reports 7 also provides a new ad hoc query tool. As a Java application, Crystal Query will function inside a browser or from a PC desktop running on any Java 1.1 compliant JVM.

Crystal Query enables the construction of a report in a dialog consisting of three sections of panes.

The table section shows the makeup and linking of the various tables selected, the query section shows the relative fields, their grouping, sorting and position and the results section shows the group tree and the results grid.

The Data Explorer allows the selection of standard PC or SQL data sources, or as an additional option, an existing Crystal Report can be used as a starting point. General navigation from the top of the query through the sections enables the intuitive creation of a report from the Web or within a PC desktop. A Report tab at the bottom of the Query Expert allows the instant viewing of query result from within the Crystal Report preview window. The final output can then be saved in the Seagate Crystal Reports native file format as an RPT.

If Crystal Query is being utilized from a browser the communication from the Web browser is passed directly through to the Query Server. The browsers currently capable of supporting Crystal Query include: Internet Explorer 4.01 or higher and Netscape Navigator 4.06 or higher.

For the latest information about this product, please visit the web site at www.seagatesoftware.com/crystalreports.

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