bye bye to Crystal and hello to BI Publisher?

Eric Lehti

VIP Member
Larry Jones,
Does Crystal have a good future?
I am concerned about Crystal. re: your comment about SAP taking a "hands-off" approach to Crystal.
I am a bit worried because last week I listened to a Questnet user presentation from Oracle, in which Sharon Winter at Oracle said that Crystal 10 is supported for awhile but that customers may someday buy Oracle's BI Publisher as a replacement. I
Here is a link to BI.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/xml-publisher/index.html
 
Re - "does Crystal have a good future?".

Well, one thing I'm sure of is that Crystal will be around a very long time from now. Crystal is not a JDE or even Oracle specific product. Its used all over the planet and is embedded in more applications and solutions than any other reporting tool, so I'm not worried about Crystal's future.

JDE's direct support for Crystal today via their xml "link" is useless anyway in my opinion for any serious reporting, so Oracle's "support" for Crystal bothers me not a whit - we go straight to the database anyway.

Sure, I'm biased towards Crystal, but I also liked what I saw in BIP this last Collaborate and am positive about its direction. I like where Oracle is taking this product.

As far as whether or not we will replace Crystal with BIP, who knows?
BIP has a long way to go before it becomes a full-fledged report writer (but it appears to be on its way).
Today its more of a replacement for forms software such as Optio or CreatePrint - something that we are considering in fact.

Net, net don't worry about whether or not Crystal will be around in the future - it will. Instead focus on your reporting needs and identify (cost/benefit analysis) the appropriate tool to meet those needs.
 
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