Workshop
Here's a brief quiz to help you review this hour's terminology.
Quiz
What is the advantage in standardizing on one tool for all organizational reporting needs?
What is content creation?
What is the new Report Component Repository in Crystal Reports 9?
Quiz Answers
Most organizations want one common reporting solution that is able to work with all their data sources and support a broad base of audience-specific reporting requirements. This in turn facilitates the attainment of a consistent skill set across the organization. Crystal Reports is the most mature and widely accepted reporting application in the market. It supports virtually all data sources, can merge data of differing sources together, and offers advanced technological features that are compatible and forward thinking to support other technological and industry standards (XML, COM, and Java, for example). It is also a solution that is easy to administer and manage after it is deployed.
Content creation is the process of report creation. This includes stating the report objective, identifying the required information for a report, accessing the appropriate data source(s), incorporating the necessary data fields and elements, constructing any required elements (such as formulas and calculations), and formatting the report for presentation purposes.
The report component repository is a central object-oriented library of report components (often called objects) that report designers can reuse and share between reports when creating report content. These components include text objects, bitmaps, custom functions, and commands. A sample repository database is also provided with Crystal Reports 9.