Create a Report in SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise from a Universe

SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise is a user-friendly version of the SAP Crystal Reports designer.

SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise streamlines the report creation process, provides significantly better support for the SAP BusinessObjects Semantic Layer, and allows users to take advantage of better connectivity to SAP BW using a BW Query.

Note

SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise was introduced with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 but never reached large adoption. So, support will be discontinued at some point in the future. Currently, we recommend that customers use either SAP Crystal Reports when specific pixel-perfect features are needed or Web Intelligence when universes are in the mix. Please reach out if you need support.

Note

The best place to put parameters in the case of BW query sources are as BW variables in the underlying query. These will provide a performance advantage by only retrieving required data.

There are different ways to format your data in a report. The Formatting toolbar includes such options as font formatting, text formatting and alignment, and highlighting. Database fields can be formatted to print with the colors, fonts, and attributes that you prefer.

These fields can also be formatted to change the way the data displays on your report. For example, you might prefer your numbers to be printed with two decimal places and your dates to be in the North American format. These attributes can be combined.

The data can be grouped and sorted. Grouped data is data that is sorted and separated into meaningful groups. For example, a customer list may be grouped by Postal Code or Region.

When data is grouped, the following sort and group direction options are available.

• Ascending order means smallest to largest (1 to 9, A to Z, False to True). The program sorts the records in ascending order and then begins a new group whenever the value changes.
• Descending order means largest to smallest (9 to 1, Z to A, True to False). The program sorts the records in descending order and then begins a new group whenever the value changes.
• Specified order is an order that you customize for your needs. The program places each record into the custom group that you specify, leaving the records in each group in original order or it sorts them in ascending or descending order, depending on your instructions.

When you sort, Crystal Reports for Enterprise asks you to define two things: the sort direction (ascending or descending), and the object you want the sort to be based on (sort object).

In single object sorting, all the records used in the report are sorted based on the values in a single object. Sorting an inventory report by stock number or sorting a customer list by customer number are examples of single object sorts.

In multiple object sorts, Crystal Reports first sorts the records based on the values in the first object selected. If two or more records have a matching object value in the first sort object, the matching records are sorted by the value in the second sort object. For example, if you choose to sort first by Country and then by Region, both in ascending order, the report would appear with countries listed in alphabetic order, and regions within each country listed in alphabetic order. Any other objects, such as the postal codes within each region, would remain unsorted.