Formatted reporting from Crystal Decisions is being integrated into
SAP and SAP Portals packages to allow analytical data to be
presented in a more easily assimilated format, writes Eric
Doyle.
Crystal Reports will be available as an integral part of SAP
Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW), MySAP Business
Intelligence (MySAP BI) and the MySAP range of customer
relationship, supply chain, financials and product lifecycle
management packages. Users will be able to access about 500
pre-formatted reports. These can be modified with Crystal
Enterprise and Crystal Reports Designer.
Peter Grendel, SAP Portal's product marketing manager, said, "The
integrated reports will be a feature of SAP BW 3.0 which will be
generally available during the second quarter of next year.
"This is the beginning of the increased openness that we promised
to bring to SAP products at our user meeting earlier this year.
Using Crystal's products means that SAP and non-SAP data can be
included in the same report."
The reporting feature will be of particular use in the MySAP BI
environment, which supports query, reporting and online analytical
processing of multidimensional data.
Ham Patel, business development manager at Crystal, explained,
"Although SAP users can surf and analyse data, it is not easy to
format the data for non-specialists, the so-called information
consumers. Integrating Crystal makes the process of creating a
report seamless."