I’m a Webi expert and so I understand its functionality very well. One of the things I noticed when I inherited this environment is that Crystal does not appear to have some of the same features I am accustomed to seeing in WebI. e.g. the ability to save a Crystal into your favorites from Public Folders and then set a schedule for it with specific parameters. Also, the ability to refresh on open or to preserve the report so it opens with the cached content. Any insight on this?
Crystal and Webi are very different in a lot of ways, and they’re used for different things.
The biggest difference is that there is no web interface for editing Crystal reports - that’s all done in desktop software, whether it’s Crystal for Enterprise or “classic” Crystal. That’s why you can’t save an open report to favorites. Instead, you have to copy and paste the closed report.
Scheduled instances have data saved with them. There also is a way to save data in the report, but only when saving from the Crystal desktop software to BOBJ - and it is NOT best practice to do this!
Reports that have not been saved with data (turn off “Save Data with Report” in the File menu of the Crystal software) should automatically refresh if they’re viewed in BOBJ. Unlike Webi, this “refresh on open” functionality does NOT affect previously scheduled instances, so they’ll open from History without refreshing.
Crystal gives you “Picture Perfect” reports that are excellent for things like form letters or filling in/duplicating forms. It also has more types of export available than Webi. While I’ve worked in both types of reports for many years, personally, I prefer Crystal unless I need to pivot data. But then, I learned Crystal first…
I am in the same boat as Dell. Cut my teeth learning Crystal Reports, only years later learning Webi. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Most of the reports I need to create from my clients need to be the pixel perfect type (forms and letters). Thus I do not do much with Webi.
