Datasheet

Although the Seagate Info SDK seemed like a good idea, developers were slow to adopt the technology

and looked for other ways to create multi-tiered applications.

This led Crystal Decisions to rethink their product roadmap, and using the basic technology and archi-

tecture from Seagate Info, they created Crystal Enterprise, which was initially released in 2001. Two of

the core features of Crystal Enterprise were an open architecture and a powerful SDK that allowed

developers to integrate Crystal Enterprise functionality (scheduling, multiple-servers, security, and so

on) into their own applications. Since that initial release, Crystal Enterprise has been grown from

strength-to-strength to become a robust, scalable platform for delivering Crystal Reports.

So for Visual Studio .NET developers, the introduction of Crystal Reports .NET provided a wealth of

tools that could be used to build scalable applications, from simple applications integrating basic report-

ing, to functionality, to complex reporting applications that serve thousands of users. With the update

for Visual Studio .NET 2003, Crystal Reports .NET provides an even more stable platform for a wide

variety of reporting applications. These generally fall into one of the following two categories: single-tier

and two-tier.

Single-Tier

Crystal Reports integrated with applications created in previous versions of Visual Basic were usually

deployed as single-tier applications. In a single-tier application, a developer would use one of the vari-

ous integration methods to combine Crystal Reports within their application and would then distribute

the report file and all of the Crystal Reports

.dll and runtime files required to make the application

work. When a report was run, it ran locally as a thick-client application, using the resources of the

machine where the application was installed.

With Crystal Reports .NET, you can still create single-tier (sometimes called fat) applications and dis-

tribute the runtime files required to run and view a report. Some of the limitations found in applications

created with previous versions of Visual Studio tools will still apply, including the need to redistribute

the report file if any changes are required. A much better solution is to consider applications with two or

more tiers.

Two-Tier

Most Web applications created with Crystal Reports .NET are considered two-tier applications, as shown

in Figure 1-6. In the first tier, a Web application makes a request for a report and the report is processed

on the Web server that hosts the application.

This architecture provides definite advantages over a single-tier application, including off-loading of the

report processing and viewing to a server and a publish-once mentality for publishing a single copy of a

report to a Web server that can be accessed by multiple users. However, with this type of two-tier archi-

tecture, your application will be limited by the number of users that can physically connect to a single

Web server, and report processing will add a definite increase to this server’s work load if used heavily

for viewing reports.

Now, let’s move on to an even better solution with an even thinner client.

Chapter 1

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