Thanks Ken.

Will have a look at it and let you know what I think of it.

Regards

Bruce

Thanks Ken for the update.

SAP Crystal Reports 2011 User's Guide is available here:
http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/CR2011/en/xi4_cr_usergde_en.pdf

 

I've installed an had a good look.  We've waited how many years for this?  What have the development team been doing all that time?  

A couple of new export formats and some new database drivers.  That could have been written and tested in a weekend.

Don't see  a lot of other improvements over what we got with 2008.

Anyone see any "Must have" features?

I've found a couple of other new features.  

Object Size and Position now has conditional Width of an object.  (X position was conditonal in CR 2008).

Page Margins are now conditional.

The User Guide refers to export to MHTML -sort of a single compressed HTML file with all the objects, but it doesn't seem to be in the application itself.

Release notes are here -

http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/cr2011/en/xi4_cr2011_release_notes_en.pdf

This CR-2011 is really nothing more than a service pack. Most people will stay on CR-2008 for a while.

What have they been doing all this time...? All of the development effort has been on "Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.0" which is a new build that will initially only connect to the new Common Semantic Layer in Enterprise 4.0.

Based on the road-map they showed in a January ASUG webinar, the next "real" full-feature release will be the CR-2012 version which will merge the "Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.0" tool with most of the direct-to-data features that legacy CR users are used to.  

Senior Business Intelligence Consultant
Toronto, Canada

SeagateInfo 7 -> Crystal Enterprise -> BOE-XI (R2) / (R3.1) | Crystal ( 7 -> 2008) design | WebI design | Best practices for Java / .Net / Web Services

Good info on the two (2) product streams and timelines here...

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/From+Crystal+Reports+2008+to+SAP+Crystal+Reports+2011+or+SAP+Crystal+Reports+for+Enterprise

Senior Business Intelligence Consultant
Toronto, Canada

SeagateInfo 7 -> Crystal Enterprise -> BOE-XI (R2) / (R3.1) | Crystal ( 7 -> 2008) design | WebI design | Best practices for Java / .Net / Web Services

Hi all,

First of all, thanks Ken for advertising the availability of CR 2011.

I agree that the features delivered in this release are minor compared to previous releases. The reason is for this is that we are working on the transition to our new Crystal Reports designer and associated servers. Currently called SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise, the new designer is initially targeted at those customers that are leveraging the SAP BusinessObjects Suite, want to take advantage of the SAP BusinessObjects Semantic Layer, or want to access SAP BW data.

This new designer is designed to reduce the amount of steps, and subsequently time, that it takes to design and maintain reports.

As mentioned, the target audience of the current release of this new designer is limited. As such, the same features that you are familiar with from CR will not necessarily be available. Of foremost attention is that the current release of CR for Enterprise does not included direct-to-data or APIs. There are a few other features as well.

We are working to close the gaps and we make some great progress towards this with the first minor release (i.e., SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise XI 4.1). This is due out in early 2012.

You can learn more about the XI 4.0 release of SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise by reading the following: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/24150.

There is also a preview of XI 4.1 for SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise here: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/24183

I'll be releasing some new blogs soon covering more about the XI 4.1 release in the coming weeks.

Please let me know if there are any questions.

Coy Yonce
Product Owner - SAP Crystal Reports