Note that this was written in
January 2008. Changes to Crystal Reports 2008 are expected that will impact the
validity of some of the findings in this article in the future.
In October 2007, Business Objects released the latest
version of Crystal Reports, called Crystal Reports 2008.
The new version of Crystal Reports does have some very cool
features. While the sexiest features are the integration of Adobe Flex, Flash
and Xcelsius charts, as a developer, I am more interested in the pragmatic
enhancements, such as the ability for end users to do things like sorting and
easily modify report parameters, the smaller footprint of the runtime that we
have to deploy and design time improvements, such as an Intellisense-like
feature when working in the formula builder that help me out.
There is a lot of documentation on the Business Objects
website explaining and demonstrating the new features.