There are many ways to deploy Crystal Reports to users. I normally lean toward the simpler and less expensive options, like locally installed viewers, or scheduled delivery of PDF output. But there are environments where a web based option is necessary. The “official” options from SAP are Crystal (Reports) Server and BO Enterprise. But there are other, less expensive products out there that also provide web delivery of Crystal Reports. These third party products allow your users to run and view reports from a browser. You can also centrally manage your report deployment from a browser.

I have created a page on my blog that lists and compares these products, and I update it every Winter with info from the vendors. This year the list features 8 products:

Crystal Reports Server – a traditional Web portal
Report Runner Web Portal – a traditional Web portal
IntelliFront BI – a traditional Web portal
Ripplestone – a traditional Web portal
rePORTAL CR – a traditional Web portal
ReCrystallize Server – a traditional Web portal
ReCrystallize Pro – a launch page generator for the web
Bezlio – a SaaS Web viewer

The blog page mentioned above contains a brief rundown on what each product does and provides links to all of the product web sites. I have also posted a feature matrix (xls) that shows some of the specifics for comparison, including prices.

If you have any feedback to share on these tools I would be happy to hear from you.

One of my customers wanted to highlight all of the empty values in a string column, but still leave the highlighted space empty. I tried using a background color formula but that didn’t work. Then I remembered an article I wrote about display strings  and how you can’t force a display string to show anything when a field was empty. It seems the same thing is true about background colors.

I tried using IsNull, converting nulls to default values and even the highlight expert. The only thing that worked was to replace the field with a formula like this:

If {Table.Field} = ''
then ' ' //single space
else {Table.Field}

The second line isn’t an empty string but is a single space. Because a space is a character, Crystal will format it with a background color.

Timing is everything. In October of 2004 I added a new formula to my website. Formula #22 showed how to round a dollar amount to the nearest nickel, but could also be used to round any number to whatever increment was needed. I have used that formula many times since – including my blog post from 2 weeks ago about rounding a DateTime to the nearest 15 minutes.

Today I heard from Ido Millet of Millet Software who suggested some improvements to that blog formula. His formula used the Crystal Reports MRound() function. I had never used the MRound function so I looked it up to see what it did. It does exactly the same thing as Formula #22.

After a bit of research I found that I mentioned the MRound() function in my January 2005 Newsletter. It was one of a dozen new functions in Crystal Reports XI.  But I somehow missed the fact that it did the same thing as Formula #22, which I had posted 3 months earlier.  Today I updated Formula #22 to use the MRound() function, but I have left the original formula for users who are still using CR versions before XI.