Moving from Crystal Reports for Enterprise to Crystal Reports

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At SAP, innovation is at the core of what we do. We are dedicated to continuously enhancing and optimizing our offerings to provide you with the best possible solutions. As part of this commitment, we periodically assess our product portfolio to ensure that each product aligns with our vision and mission. As one of the strategic steps, we plan to remove Crystal Reports for Enterprise in SAP Business Intelligence 2025. It allows us to rationalize our portfolio and allocate our resources more effectively. By focusing on a curated selection of products, we can invest more deeply in research, development, and support, ensuring that our solutions remain at the forefront of innovation.

Crystal Reports (a.k.a. CR, CR Classic, CR20xx) and Crystal Reports for Enterprise (a.k.a. CR4E) run parallelly for a long time. But Crystal Reports covers more use cases in the real business world. By consolidating our efforts around Crystal Reports, we are devoting our energy and expertise to creating a better product experience that caters to a broader range of user groups: business users, data analysts, developers and partners. We believe that by investing in Crystal Reports, we can provide you with a more modernized user experience, backed by robust features and extensibility.

When compared to CR4E, following key gaps in CR2020 were identified and being addressed:

• Reporting on relational Universe (Unx) - will be supported starting BI 4.3 SP04 (Dec 2023).


• Reporting on BW through BICS - planned in BI 4.3 SP05.


• Reporting on relational connection created in the Information Design tool (IDT).

SAP is working actively to close these gaps. In the meantime, CR4E will remain supported until BI 4.3 end of maintenance (Dec 2027), you can consider move to Crystal Reports (CR 2020) at your own pace.

If you'd like to plan for moving your CR4E reports to CR2020, below are general steps, and connectivity type specific tips. Please note, certain migration steps might be further simplified in coming releases, but automated migration is currently not planned.

CR4E connectivity type	Migration tips and steps
General guidelines	General migration steps:  Save your CR4E report to a local folder, then open it in CR2020 designer. Following dialog would pop up in CR2020, click "OK". Set Datasource Location: In CR2020 "Database" menu, click "Set Datasource Location...". Under "Replace with" section, make a CR2020 connection to the same data source. Select table names ("efashion" and "efashion_query" in below example), then click "Update". Repeat step 2 if your report contains multiple connections. Field mapping (only if needed): e.g. table / field names and availability differ in CR and CR4E. Note: if certain field has no alternative and can't be mapped, they will have to be removed from your report. Validation: You should be able to refresh and validate your report in CR2020 Designer, and then verify in BOE. Normally formatting, formulas and summaries will be retained in CR2020, adjust the report only if necessary. Tag Cloud / Box Plot / Tree Map / Waterfall charts are not supported in CR2020, switch to other CR2020 supported chart types. Correct issues found during validation (if any). Production usage. In short, customers can start moving their CR4E reports, if corresponding connectivity is available in CR2020.
If your CR4E report is built on relational Unx (e.g., Unx Universe on ODBC/JDBC connection)	With 4.3 SP04 (Dec 2023) or newer versions, you can start migrating CR4E reports on relational Unx to CR2020. Beside the general steps above, below are additional things to keep an eye on during migration. In step 2 above, to make a connection to relational Unx in CR2020, use the new driver named "Universe (Unx)" As part of step 2, query panel pops up after selecting an universe. User have to manually recreate the Unx query. User could make a copy of same report and open it in CR4E Designer side by side, so that he/she can compare and recreate Unx query easily. Before closing CR2020 query panel (QP), make sure the recreated query in CR2020 is exactly the same as the query in CR4E (E.g. compare generated SQL). If there's missing field, it will be removed from your migrated report later on. For CR2020 relational Unx connectivity (SP04+) usage tips and known issues, see SAP Note 3371775 (to be released in Dec 2023). Crystal Reports 2020 Unx Query Panel Avoid using CR2020 "Universe" driver (for unv universe), that driver will be removed in BI 2025. See also https://blogs.sap.com/2023/01/12/unv-is-dead-long-live-unx/
If your CR4E report is built on SAP BW or BW/4HANA (via BICS)	With current versions (e.g. 4.3 SP03), customers could consider migrate to CR2020 BW connectivity (crdb_bwmdx driver), but there can be some difficulties, e.g.: BW field names differ a lot between CR4E (BICS) and CR2020 (crdb_bwmdx), field mapping is difficult. BW parameter & Hierarchical data handling in CR4E (BICS) and CR2020 (crdb_bwmdx) are different. CR2020 BICS connectivity to BW is currently planned in 4.3 SP05. (Recommended) Customers could wait for CR2020 supports BICS connectivity to BW, with that the migration for corresponding reports will be simpler.
If your CR4E reports is built on relational connections (e.g., ODBC/JDBC connection created in Information Design Tool - IDT, then published to BOE)	With current versions (e.g. 4.3 SP03), above general migration steps can already be used to migrate CR4E reports on (IDT) relational connections. Currently the IDT relational connection will be replaced with a "crdb" connection in CR2020, e.g. crdb_odbc. In a future release, if CR2020 directly supports IDT relational connections (time TBD), that could also simplify migration steps for corresponding reports. Customers can choose to migrate now (with the general steps above), or choose to wait for CR2020 directly support IDT relational connections.

Note those plans and dates could change over time.

This blog will be updated when new functionality or information become available. Please also feel free to let us know if you got further question regarding CR4E migration.

References:

SAP Analytics Business Intelligence Statement of Direction

UNV is dead, long live UNX | SAP Blogs