Deploying Crystal Reports On Top of A SAP BI Query

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com
2009 SAP AG 1
Deploying Crystal Reports on Top
of a SAP BI Query
Applies to:
SAP BI NetWeaver 2004s, Crystal Reports 2008. For more information, visit the Business Intelligence
homepage.
Summary
The objective of the article is to outline the basic steps of integration followed while creating a simple report
using crystal reports 2008 on top of a SAP BI query.

Author: Gundeep Singh
Company: Accenture
Created on: 08 October 2009
Author Bio
Gundeep Singh is working as SAP BI Consultant in Accenture Services Private Ltd and having extensive
experience in implementation of BI/ABAP projects specializing in SCM areas.
Deploying Crystal Reports on Top of a SAP BI Query
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2009 SAP AG 2
Table of Contents
Pre-Requisites .................................................................................................................................................... 3
Steps Involved in Creating a basic Crystal Report on top of SAP BI Query ...................................................... 3
Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 13
Disclaimer and Liability Notice .......................................................................................................................... 14

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Pre-Requisites
SAP BI query built on top of an info-provider will be used to act as a feeder to Crystal Report. As a standard
best practice SAP recommends keeping all our intelligence at the BI end leveraging the OLAP functionalities
and making use of Crystal Reports as a solution for highly formatted reports. A dummy query made to
showcase the steps involved is as below:

Steps Involved in Creating a basic Crystal Report on top of SAP BI Query
1. Log onto Crystal Reports 2008 to have a window as below open

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2. Click on new report icon a new POP up window will open.

3. Double click on create new connection

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4. Double Click on SAP BW MDX query. A window having information of all the servers will open.

SAP recommends using BW MDX connection when fetching data from a SAP BI query as BW MDX driver is
able to leverage a BW query with two structures and also shows display attributes.
5. Select the relevant system and double click. In our case we chose IDES BI 7

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6. Fill the login details. Connection of crystal report with BI 7 Ides server will be up and running.

7. Under new created connection, you will have all your queries and cubes created in that system available
for further reporting.

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8. Expand the query node to find out the appropriate bex query and move that to right hand side by clicking
on right pointed arrow button. Click on OK button

9. Further, Crystal Report editor will open up as below:

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The Design tab is divided into five sections:
Report Header (RH) : Used for the report title and information need to be displayed at the beginning of the
report
Page Header (PH) : Used to put information at the top of the page i.e chapter name , column headings
Details (D) : Used for the body of the report, and it is printed once per record. The bulk of the report data
generally appears .The bulk of the report data generally appears in this section
Report Footer (RF) : Used for information you want to appear once at the end of report
Page Footer (PF) : Used to contain information you want to appear at the end of each page like page
header , author

10. Select View-> Field Explorer
The Field Explorer view is used to insert, modify, or delete fields on the Layout page of Crystal Reports.
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11. Expand the data base field node in the field explorer dialog box and then expand query.

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The mapping of elements in BeX query designer and Crystal reports field explorer is as below:
- Each characteristic in the query will result in an element in the field explorer with a key & a description field.
- Each navigational attribute in the query will result in an element in the field explorer with a key and a
description item (for example, Regional Code and Area Code).
- Each display attribute will create an element in the field explorer underneath the corresponding
characteristic (for example, Customer number with several display attributes).
- Crystal Reports will include all available display attributes for the characteristic and not only the display
attributes that are included in the SAP BW query.

12. Drag the desired fields (company code in this case) into detail section of the design tab. An object frame
appears with the arrow cursor as you drag the field onto the report.
The object frame represents the object you have just selected for placement.
The size of the object frame approximates the size of the data in the field selected.
Move the object frame as far to the left as you can in the detail section. In case you move the field too far to
the left. The arrow cursor turns into a stop cursor indicating that you can not drag the field that far. You can
not place any object outside the page margin.
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13. In a similar way, drag other desired characteristics 0CALYEAR, 0D_MATERIAL, RATE, QUANTITY and
Net value fields to the right of company code in the same order.

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14. Preview the report by clicking print preview on the standard tool bar (or View -> Print Preview in the
menu). To activate print preview tab, it is required to select print preview while previewing it first time.
Preview tab appears right to the design tab and you can switch between the two by clicking the
corresponding tab.

Following the above steps one can create a basic report using crystal reports 2008 on top of SAP BI query.
Further improvisation to the report would depend on the requirements. One can add charts, graphs, map
navigation, integrate the crystal document with other interactive items like Xcelsius components.
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Related Content
Further Reading & References
Business Objects Integration Kit for SAP - Crystal Reports 2008 by Ingo Hilgefort
Formatted Reporting: Crystal Reports Integration
Crystal Reports 2008 SP1 Users Guide
For more information, visit the Business Intelligence homepage.
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Disclaimer and Liability Notice
This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not
supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade.
SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document,
and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk.
SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or
code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and
services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this
document.

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