Jd Edward's has certified CR 8.5 and JD Edward's Open Data Access (ODA) driver for reporting.
If you have Xe you will need a fat client install to use the ODA. If your comfortable with the JDE Database schema, you could use a combination of Cr drivers and client access drivers to connect to the data source.
If security and user access is an issue than you should consider CR 8.5 and CE 8.5. This approach will probably require addition hardware costs and CE user licensing costs. CR 8.5 comes with five standard CE seats but no security.
Oh, CR RDC gives you the ability to design a stand alone system to deploy reports to users.