Crystal Reports and RESTful Web Services

[Former Member]

1.  Does anyone know the timing for release of Crystal 2016?

2.  I heard Crystal 2016 is in beta testing now and that it will support RESTful Web Services. Documentation says that the 2013 version also supports RESTful Web Services. Can someone explain what the differences are between the 2013 version and the upcoming 2016 version with respect to RESTful web services.

[former_member11696 · Accepted solution]

There will be more API's available in 4.2. No date yet when it goes live

Don

[daniel_paulsen · Accepted solution]

Hi Sarah,

There are no RESTful APIs for Crystal Reports 2013 or 2016.  The Rest APIs will only work with Crystal Reports For Enterprise reports and not the classic reports designed with the CRW32.exe 32bit designer.  Do you have a link to the documentation you mentioned?

For CR2013 and CR2016 you still need to use the .NET or Java SDKs.

A CR2013 report can, however, be converted to a CR for Enterprise report.

Dan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I apologize in advance. I am in IT but I am limited in my understanding of APIs and their functionality. I am including the link to the SAP doc that shows supported functions and also will lay out what I'm trying to accomplish and hoping you experts can shed light on the situation.

Here is the document with supported features and the SDK doc:

-Page 13 of doc in link below, 4^th item down says the feature RESTFUL Web service for SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise is supported by Crystal 2013

https://www.sapstore.com/medias/Reports-Versions.pdf?context=bWFzdGVyfHJvb3R8Mjg2MzA0MXxhcHBsaWNhdGl...

-Crystal Reports SDK – see 6^th item down for Developer Guide RESTful services.

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-35632

Our situation:

We use a cloud-based CRM software called Cosential and they have created a RESTful API called Compass for creating, updating, searching and removing work product elements in Cosential. Compass works with JSON.

Unfortunately, we don't have in-house expertise to use the Compass API and found it cost-prohibitive to hire someone to help us.

We do have Crystal Report expertise in-house but we only own Crystal Reports, not the Crystal BI/Enterprise software. We spoke to the CRM vendor who thought they could set something up on their end to allow us to make calls from Crystal Reports to a server at their location that would return the data we need. Would the vendor need to have the Crystal Enterprise version at their end and we'd make a connection to their server to get our data. Nothing has happened yet so I'm not certain that anyone knows how to make this happen yet.

I guess my question is what would the vendor need to do to allow us to speak to their RESTful API via our Crystal Report application? Is that conceptually/technically possible given our limited development expertise?

[daniel_paulsen · Accepted solution]

Hi Sarah,

No need for apologies.  The links you provided can certainly cause some confusion.  If you look at a more recent developer guide, its clear which version of Crystal supports Restful.

http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/sbo41/en/sbo41sp3_cr_restws_en.pdf 

Check the bottom of page 4.

Crystal Reports consumes data, so the way I see it is that the Compass API needs to expose data so you can consume it remotely.  If their APIs does this, then you can retrieve the data in a JSON format, transform it to XML and use Crystal Reports to report off of the XML (either a dataset in memory or a file saved to disk)

I hope this helps,

Dan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yes, the Compass API does expose data exactly as you said but as noted earlier, we don't have the expertise to retrieve the data in a JSON format and found it very expensive to contract someone to set it up for us, which is why we turned to Crystal to see if there was something we could do directly from within Crystal. And since this is a new feature from our vendor, they are continually exposing new fields which we'd then have to go back to a consultant to add for us which further adds timne and expense.

We want to do what exactly what you suggested: retrieve the data in a JSON format, transform it to XML and use Crystal Reports to report off of the XML preferably in a dataset that is updated regularly.

Do you have any suggestions on how to do that with our limited expertise or where we can gain the expertise to do this? The bigger clients that use Cosential and have the in-house expertise are thrilled with the Compass solution but we are struggling. I know this is a little off topic at this point but any suggestions are appreciated.

Also, my understanding is no matter what, we'd need CR Enterprise Reports to make this happen in any case. Correct? And also we'd need still have expertise to pull the Compass data out of Cosential and into Crystal Enterprise reporting repository?

Thanks,

Sarah

[daniel_paulsen · Accepted solution]

Hi Sarah,

You don't need CR for Enterprise.  You can report off of XML with the stand alone designer (CR 2013).

you can search the internet for how to convert JSON to XML.  Its only a few lines of code.  There are also online converters that you could use to test and see if it meets your needs, but it sounds like you will need to get some consulting to implement the conversion.

[yoppie_ariesthio · Accepted solution]

Hi Daniel,

Can we combine crystal report with sapui5 application?

Thanks

[daniel_paulsen · Accepted solution]

Hi Yoppie,

I don't know much about sapui5.  What specific workflow are you thinking about?

[yoppie_ariesthio · Accepted solution]

Hi Daniel,

SAPUI5 is like javascript programming language. UI Development Toolkit for HTML5 (SAPUI5) - User Interface Add-On for SAP NetWeaver - SAP Library

Some API like C#.NET can use crystal report. But is it able for SAPUI5 doing same like C#? (Calling crystal report from imported library)

Best Regards

Yoppie

[former_member197386 · Accepted solution]

Hello Yoopie,

Please could you open a new topic since this one is already marked as "Answered"?

Best regards,

Anthony

[former_member11696]

moved to RESTful SDK forum