Jamie, Greg, and Eric, are at it again with Josh, Coy, David, and Gabo. In this second part of the two parter, we let the contestants fight it out until the end. OK, we are probably still all pals at the end, so just use your imagination.
We have voted and here are our thoughts on the match up. How do you think they did? Leave us your vote in the comments: Who best represented their technology, and which technology won?
| Category | Jamie | Greg | Eric |
|---|---|---|---|
| Formatting and Visualization | Crystal | Webi | Webi |
| Analysis Capability | Webi | Webi | Webi |
| Mass Report Distribution | Crystal | Crystal | Crystal |
| Exporting | Crystal | Crystal | Crystal |
| Data Connectivity | Crystal | Crystal | Crystal |
| Formula Engine | Crystal | Webi | Crystal |
| Performance | Crystal | Crystal | Crystal |
| Developer Experience | Crystal | Webi | Crystal |
| User Experience | Webi (but this should count very heavily) | Webi | Webi |
| Extensibility | Crystal | Tie | Tie |
| Upgrade Experience | Crystal | Tie | Tie |
| Embedding Experience | Crystal | Webi | Tie |
| Do they belong in the same deployment? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Who won the bout? | Neither - Depends on your needs. | Deski | Crystal |
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I'm calling this a tie, not because Crystal didn't beat the pants off of Webi in almost every category (they did), but rather because every organization is different and has different needs. If you have no ad hoc needs whatsoever, Crystal is the clear winner. If you want a large, empowered user base, Webi is gonna deliver.
Regarding data connectivity:
True CR 2011 can use all kinds, but so can Webi, albeit one has to create a uiverse/semantical layer first (SAP BEx queries being an exception).
Ease of use for power-users/analysts:
Webi beats CR hands down.
Summary:
If Webi would allow for better positioning of blocks by pixel e.g. and maybe offer some extended formulas to loop for example through a result set (WHILE condition = TRUE DO something.. END LOOP) I do NOT see the need for 2 seperate reporting tools at all.
History:
-----------------------------
The only reason we have CR & WEBi is..
because Crystal was bought by the company "BusinessOb jects" and mainly the server architecture paid off. But now we have 2 reporting tools, not counting SAP BusObjects Explorer, Analysis (MS Office or OLPA edition), Xcelsius...
As rightly pointed out by Jamie and Andreas, both tools have their ve's and downsides.
I think, a tool which can be easily used by a tech or a non-tech user becomes acceptable and popular.
Webi, in that context appears to be popular(a business-user can do slice-dice,ad-hoc analysis etc).For example, it seems more suitable for Operational Reporting where lot of what-if's are to be answered.
Crystal Reports appears to be technically much stable and sound.it has a powerful formula engine,accepts user Function Libraries written in java,C or C# and satisfies the need to have one tool which connects to any database,does complex computations and has a robust output format model(export to html,XML,apart from regular formats) for mass distribution to users.
Hence, Crystal Reports offers a stronger,flexib le,accurate,com putation-based reporting platform that can be used where highly reliable,sensit ive,accurate,ef ficient reporting is required.Like, Financial reporting
1. Charting engine of Xcelsius to be used for Webi? Hell no I say, because:
- The charting engine is FLASH based and FLASH seems to be a dead horse in the water
- XC charting engine seems slow (try to create a heatmap with 100 dimensions in XC and in Webi and see, which one performs well)
2. I still believe that the customer does not need two separate reporting tools such as CR & Webi. SAP should really, REALLY think HARD about consolidating CR & WEEBI into ONE reporting tool over a period of let's say 5 years. And for the record: I do not care what that new, cponsildated tool will be called. Call it CROS (CR on steroids) for all I care ;-)
Sure, it's not pretty and dancing on your iPad but Crystal wins in the "Easy Gulp and Barf" (EGB) method for Operational and Transactional reports - which (along with the low-price) is a major reason why it was OEM embedded in so many Off-the-Shelf and Custom applications.
Even now, the SAP Roadmap and ECC enhancement packs appear to be replacing some of the old BEX functionality with embedded Crystal Reports content *(Not sure if it is CR-2011 or CR4E formatted).
Someone on the Podcast described Crystal as a "Utility" - and in many ways that is exactly what it is. It is "part of the plumbing" that nobody thinks about or cares about until the sewer collapses - and then they understand the value.
That HUGE footprint will keep some flavour of Crystal "alive" for years.