Crystal Reports Shows Off for Developers in Its Own Ad Campaign

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Since the early 1990s Crystal Reports software has helped developers and business professionals create interactive reports from a variety of data sources. Even by the standards of the tech industry, a lot has changed since the product debuted. The product's parent companies have changed names and been acquired, most recently when Business Objects was acquired by SAP in 2007.

The environment in which Crystal Reports is used has also evolved quite a bit since the early 90s. Developers working with business intelligence and reporting software need a product that can work in different development languages, like Java and .NET; with different browsers; different operating systems; and different integrated development environments (IDEs) like Eclipse and Visual Studio.

Go Behind the Scenes of the Crystal Reports Banner Campaign Now—Includes Live Report and Sample Code Explore reports generated by Crystal Reports using data tabulated from web sites hosting our banner ads.

When SAP® BusinessObjects™ and Fjord, a division of Cossette Inc., started working on ideas for an advertising campaign to promote Crystal Reports 2008, the latest version of the software, they wanted to make it clear to developers that Crystal Reports offered an easy environment for developers looking to create reports and that the product would "just work," even in today's world of diverse browsers, languages, and operating systems.

"We wanted to put Crystal Reports back in the minds of developers and get them to look at the latest product functionality," said Cossette's Dana Dansereau.

The group decided the best way to communicate in the language of Crystal Reports was with an ad banner that was itself a report. When the banner ad loads it sends data about the user to a central .NET Web application. This application then tabulates and generates reports using Crystal Reports on a per-site basis about the Web site viewers' geo-locations, operating systems, Web browsers and Flash versions. The resulting reports graphically display the diverse environments that developers work in.

Visitors who click on the ad are sent to a landing page where they can download Crystal Reports and Crystal Reports Server or find out more about how the team integrated Crystal Reports for use with the campaign through sample code, flow diagrams and the Crystal Reports' interactive report viewer.

The landing page reports use an ASPx.NET 2.0 Webform, which instantiates the Crystal Reports Viewer .NET Control. This control displays the report by loading the actual .RPT file, which fetches the live data from the database. The banner ads use custom XML output from the database, which is created and uploaded to Amazon's S3 service every 15 minutes.

The banners are actually a microcosm of how Crystal Reports works in many organizations that use the software. More than just a neat trick or window dressing, the banners display information that can help make business decisions. Developers profit from knowing information about the browsers, operating systems, and Flash versions in use. The business also needs this information to plan new products and market existing products to the right audience.

For the ad campaign's development, the team turned to Tsung-Yin Tsai, a .NET and PHP developer who never before used Crystal Reports, to create the banner ad application. Thanks to various wizards that help create formulas, connect to databases, and generate SQL queries, he was able to complete the project in a matter of days.

"It halved my development time, including the time to learn Crystal Reports," Tsai said.

For developing Web applications, Tsai took advantage of Crystal Reports' ASP.NET control, which makes it easy to put reports on the Web or a company intranet. He also used Crystal Reports' integration with Visual Studio, which has been a feature of the product for almost 20 years.

The Crystal Reports Family of Products
More than just an easy-to-use presentation layer, the Crystal Reports family of products features tools that will help developers and business professionals make the most of the information in their organization.

The original Crystal Reports application is a rich-client app that sits on the desktop and is used to design reports. It features drag-and-drop report development, and writes all of the SQL and formulas itself. There are SDKs available for both .NET and Java, and integration is available with both the Visual Studio and Eclipse IDEs. Developers can embed the Crystal Reports run-time engine in their applications, and extensive support exists for exporting reports in several different formats.

The Crystal Reports Viewer allows users to extend their Crystal Reports application by letting people without a Crystal Reports license view the reports, working much like Adobe's Acrobat Reader. By letting users share reports outside of the application, organizations can limit the number of people paying for a Crystal Reports license and accessing their databases.

Crystal Reports Server adds management features and security to Crystal Reports. It controls permissions and can be used to schedule times to run reports. Crystal Reports Server also includes a default portal where users can view information and reports. Developers can take advantage of the default web portal, or they can create their own using Crystal Reports Server as the back end report management system via the SDK.

Crystal Reports.com offers many of the same features as Crystal Reports Server, but is remotely hosted for you. Many of its basic features are free.

Crystal Reports Developer Advantage provides a run-time license that allows developers to embed the Crystal Reports run-time engine in applications shared outside of their organization or in commercial applications. Popular with ISVs, Developer Advantage lets developers give users of their software affordable access to professional reporting, and provides the flexibility of a royalty-free reporting engine.

With its ability to process information across various environments and its integration with Eclipse and Visual Studio IDEs, Crystal Reports is the perfect presentation layer for applications that generate reports regardless of the language being used.

As Tsai demonstrated by creating the campaign application, developers can pick up Crystal Reports with minimal experience and the software will handle most of the heavy tasks.

"Not enough can be said about how much time is saved over hand-coding," Dansereau said.