We're upgrading our hardware and in doing so will have to say goodbye to Safari.

We've identified Crystal as our preferred report writer, and have been advised by Baan to go for the Enterprise version.

With only three report authors and a few more users this looks a very expensive option compared with Crystal Advanced.

What benefits does Enterprise have, other than a data dictionary?

UK User Group members have been making very positive noises about Enterprise Cyberquery from Cyberscience. A keynote speaker at the last conference explained why they had chosen eCQ over Crystal, and I believe others have replaced Safari with eCQ. Cyberscience have an office in Australia - you may want to check them out.

Hope this helps,
Jacob.

Crystal Enterprise is a distribution system for your Crystal Reports. It allows users to run and schedule reports in any number of ways. Business Objects, who bought Crystal Reports, has made it (Crystal Enterprise) the backbone of it's product line of business intelligence software.

The Solution Kit for Baan is an interface to the Baan data dictionary for Crystal Reports. It allows you to report against the look and feel of the Baan data that your users normally see in Baan. The licensing for the Baan Solution Kit is tied to the Crystal Enterprise system. You don't have to get the Baan piece, and you can get to the Baan data by going through the native database that it is stored on. If you go at the data this way, then you will have to reconstruct a number of data relationships that the solution kit naturally brings out.

Yes, it is pricey, but the ROI is well worth the investment.

Gilbert Guymer
Database Administrator
Lufkin Indutries, Inc.

We have had the problem as well that it first was to expensive for our company. However now it been bought by Business Objects it seems that you can make better deals.

Don't forget that you can use it for more than Baan. Crystal is one of the most used report tools.

Han

If you are running on SQL I would suggest you take a look at Microsoft SQL Reporting services.

It is easy to create reports.
They can be delivered to your users in Excel format autoomatically and when you want.

It's great!

Dan,

Take a look at www.ariel-global.com Ariel integrates seamlessly into BaaN cheaper than CD and is being implemented into a growing number of BaaN users W/wide.. Online demo available Web based - Capella features built in KPI alerting technology + dashboard

Caio
Dave D :eek:

Hi,

If any of you all have tried SQL Reporting Services please guide me on the following

1) How did you handle enum fields ?
2) How to call a Baan DLL in SQL Reporting Services ?

Regards
Rita

We are using (very sucessfully) reporting services.

An enum is stored as binary in SQL and can be converted to an integer using the cast as in the following example as part of the select statement.

select t_orno, cast (t_swor as int) as Status

We do not use Baan dll's (in reporting services at least)

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply Mr. Andrew


I wanted to know how to get the enum Description, have you done this ?

Regards
Rita

Cyberquery has been selected at many Baan sites in the UK, Europe and US recently so if you are looking to improve your BI & Reporting capability for Baan I respectfully recommend that you contact us.

To answer Rita's point specifically: One of the reasons Cyberquery is becoming so popular with Baan users is that the Cyberquery solution automatically maps the text associated with enumerated fields, and makes it available like any other field in the table. A Cyberquery user never has to bother with the fact that it's an enumerated field, nor how to find out what it means - it's all there for you. The same applies to all Baan's unusual data types.

Jerry Bolt
Cyberscience.

http://www.cyberscience.com/solutions-baan.html

Thanks Mr Jerry Bolt.

But we do not have Cyberquery and do not think we will be getting it. Is there any other way out ?

Regards
Rita

I believe Crystal Reports also take care of enumeration and prints the description rather than the number. When you pick an enumerated field to be printed, you will have theoption of printing the enumeration or its description and hence you can print descriptions without any additional effort. Of course you need Crystal Baan Native driver to accomplish this.

Thanks Mr Shaboo

I know that about Crystal Reports. But My clients need these reports in SQL Reporting Services.

So I need the help.

Regards
Rita

If you have access to Baan Tools, then you can get a list of the enums with their descriptions. I have then used a CASE statement in Oracle, which SQL Server also uses, to construct a SELECT statement to return the description in place of the numeric value that resides in the table field. The only problem with this is the chance that the enum domain might get changed by Baan in some future update. Most of the time these values don't change, but do check after an upgrade because you never know.

I don't know of a way to access Baan DLL's other than calling them from Baan session scripts.

Crystal allows you to create reports against database procedures which I have done. I have only used Oracle procedures for this, but read that it can be done for SQL Server procedures too.

Gilbert Guymer
Database Administrator
Lufkin Industries, Inc.

Thanks all of you,

I could do it with the CASE in the select Query

Regards
Rita