What happens when you schedule a report?

When you schedule a report, you instruct Crystal Enterprise to process a report object at a particular point in time, or on a recurring schedule. For example, if you have a report based off of your web server logs, you can schedule the report to run every night on a recurring basis.

Tip:    Crystal Enterprise also allows you to schedule jobs that are dependent upon other events. For details, see Managing events overview.

When a user schedules a report using the Crystal Enterprise web desktop, the web desktop sends the request to the application tier.

• In a Crystal Enterprise system that uses the COM SDK, the web server passes the web desktop request to the Web Connector. The Web Connector then passes the request to the Web Component Server (WCS), which communicates with the rest of Crystal Enterprise. Since the request was to schedule a report, the WCS passes the request to the Crystal Management Server.
• In a Crystal Enterprise system that uses the Java SDK, the web server passes the web desktop request directly to the application server. The request is evaluated by the Java SDK. Since the request was to schedule a report, the SDK passes the request to the Crystal Management Server.

When the CMS gets the request, it checks to see if the user has sufficient rights to schedule the report. If the user has sufficient rights, the CMS schedules the report to run at the specified time(s). When the time occurs, the CMS passes the job to the Report Job Server. The Report Job Server retrieves the report from the Input File Repository Server and runs the report against the database, thereby creating an instance of the report. The Report Job Server then saves the report instance to the Output File Repository Server, and tells the CMS that it has completed the job successfully.

Tip:    For details about multiple time zones, see Supporting users in multiple time zones.

Note:    

• The Cache Server and the Page Server do not participate in scheduling reports or in creating instances of scheduled reports. This can be an important consideration when deciding how to configure Crystal Enterprise, especially in large installations. See Scaling Your System.
• When you schedule program objects or object packages, the interaction between servers follows the same pattern as it does for reports. However, program objects are processed by the Program Job Server.
• Users without schedule rights on an object will not see the schedule option in Crystal Enterprise.