In a database, a record is a complete unit of related information, an electronic file folder that holds all of the data on a given entity. Each record contains one or more fields that contain the specific pieces of data of interest. In a customer database, for example, a record would store all of the data on a single customer. In an inventory database, a record would store all of the data on a single inventory item. Data from an individual record is displayed or printed as a row of data on a columnar report.
A report is an organized presentation of data. As a management tool, a report is used to provide management with the insight it needs to run an organization effectively. In Crystal Enterprise, you publish objects to the system, and then schedule those objects to generate instances on a recurring basis.
The Report Application Server (RAS) is a Crystal Enterprise server component that provides users with report design capability over the Web. It processes reports that Crystal Enterprise users view with the Advanced DHTML viewer, and it provides the ad hoc reporting capabilities that allow Crystal Enterprise users to create and modify reports over the Web.
The Report Job Server processes scheduled reports, as requested by the Crystal Management Server, and generates report instances (instances are versions of a report object that contain saved data). To generate a report instance, the Job Server communicates with the database to retrieve the current data.
A report object is an object that is created using a Crystal designer component (such as Crystal Reports or Crystal Analysis). Report objects contain report information (such as database fields). When you schedule a report, Crystal Enterprise generates an instance or instances of the object. When you publish a report object to Crystal Enterprise, only the structure of the report (the template information) is saved; that is, the published report object contains no saved data.
Report objects displayed by themselves in a viewer—without the rest of the report page—are referred to as Report Parts. More precisely, however, Report Parts are hyperlink definitions that point from a home report object to a destination object.
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