Upgrading Business Objects Reporting Solutions
The following table provides information to help you evaluate which Business Objects reporting solution is appropriate for the level of scalability you are targeting.
Note
For a comparison of architectures between solutions, see Comparing Architectures Across Business Objects Reporting Solutions.
Feature
|
Crystal Reports for Visual Studio
|
Crystal Reports
|
Crystal Reports Server or BusinessObjects Enterprise
|
|---|---|---|---|
ASP.NET Support
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
Interactive Report Viewing
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
Single Sign-On
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
Windows Application Support
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
Enhanced Report Designer
|
X
|
X
|
|
Mobile Device Support
|
X
|
X
|
|
Native Database Drivers
|
X
|
X
|
|
OLAP Data Sources
|
X
|
X
|
|
Report Dependency Checker
|
X
|
X
|
|
Templates
|
X
|
X
|
|
Dynamic Cascading Parameters
|
X
|
X
|
|
Cross-Platform Deployment
|
X
|
||
Information Delivery Management System
|
X
|
||
Integrated Security
|
X
|
||
Load Balancing
|
X
|
||
Report Object Repository
|
X
|
||
Report Scheduling
|
X
|
||
Programmatic Report Creation and Modification
|
X
|
||
CrystalReportViewer Object Model
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
ReportDocument Object Model
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
ReportClientDocument Object Model
|
X
|
X
|
|
RAS Server
|
X
|
||
InfoObject Object Model
|
X
|
||
Scalability
|
Low
|
Low
|
Medium to High
|
Crystal Reports for Visual Studio
Crystal Reports for Visual Studio is the custom version of Crystal Reports that is available as part of the default installation in most versions of Microsoft Visual Studio. For more information, see What is Crystal Reports for Visual Studio?.
Crystal Reports
Crystal Reports is a full featured reporting tool. It has all of the benefits of Crystal Reports for Visual Studio, along with many other features. For more information on Crystal Reports, see What is Crystal Reports?.
Crystal Reports Server or BusinessObjects Enterprise
A RAS server is included with Crystal Reports Server and BusinessObjects Enterprise, which provides a significant increase in performance and scalability for creating, manipulating, and managing reports using the ReportClientDocument object model.
Crystal Reports Server gives you everything you need to create, manage and securely deploy reports over the web in one low-cost package. It addresses all steps in the reporting process - including data access and report design, report management and delivery, and report integration with portals and applications, which makes it easy for existing or new Crystal reports to be shared over the web.
BusinessObjects Enterprise is a multi-server business intelligence (BI) platform designed to address large-scale reporting and BI requirements. Its multi-server environment provides you with the fault-tolerance, load balancing, scalability, and the reliability you need for success with larger, more mission-critical work. BusinessObjects Enterprise is also recommended for its advanced reporting capabilities such as auditing, Crystal Reports Explorer, and the Encyclopedia and Process Tracker.
To create, manage and securely deploy reports for your small or medium sized business, use Crystal Reports Server. For mission critical applications, maximum scalability and additional business intelligence tools use BusinessObjects Enterprise.