Annual Reports Design, Crystal Report Software : As applications become more complex, data presentation needs to become more complex as well. Creating this level of reporting from scratch is a time consuming and difficult task. How can developers address these needs without devoting all of their time to creating reports? Crystal Reports XI from Business Objects is at the top of this list.

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An application is only as powerful as its ability to handle data in a meaningful way. Each year, application developers write hundreds of thousands of lines of code with the primary purpose of storing and retrieving data. What do application users do with this data? Many simply look at it, but a growing number of users want to do more than see the data. They want to interact with it. They want to slice and dice the data to fit their individual interests.

An application can have a beautiful user interface but if it can’t provide the information people need in the format they want, it has failed. To take this one step further, as applications become more complex, data presentation needs become more complex as well. Creating this level of reporting from scratch is a time consuming and difficult task.

How can developers address these needs without devoting all of their time to creating reports? The answer: they don’t have to. 3rd parties have already invested time and energy to produce products that solve these problems and present data in a clear and concise format and provide data consumers a myriad of customization and formatting options. Crystal Reports XI from Business Objects is at the top of this list.

What are the criteria one should use when deciding whether to use a 3rd party tool? If one does decide to use a 3rd party tool, what considerations are there in making the final decision on the actual products?

Decision Making Criteria There are a minimum of 5 criteria which should be considered when choosing a reporting tool:

• Using the tool, how easy is it for application developers or report designers to create reports?
• Can information display be controlled where necessary?
• How easy is it to incorporate reports created with the tool into existing applications?
• How easy is it to deploy, scale, and maintain reports created with the tool?
• How usable are the presentation controls for the Information Consumer?