Business Objects has a new version of Crystal Reports ready for release called Crystal Reports 2008. They are planning on announcing it at the Insight Americas conference in mid – October. So far there is no public mention of this product that I can find except for one page that I am sure is only public by accident. But, that probably explains why they are allowing upgrades to XI for $99 through the end of September. They also recently began selling full developer copies of XI for only $395 till 9/28.

I do know that the partners are aware of this and probably have copies but otherwise there are no public descriptions of the changes or new features. If anyone has any information to add, please let me know.

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Update: Tonight I found the main 3 new features of Crystal Reports 2008:

1. On-Report Filtering (interactive filters for pulling subsets of data without a refresh)
2. On-Report Sorting (single click to change the sort field and order without a refresh)
3. Xcelsius content embedded in reports

There are probably many smaller changes and additions but these are the three that BO seems to be highlighting.