Splitting of Crystal Reports,
Peak Concurrent Access by 1,000 + Users

Case Study 9

Problem:

A major teaching hospital had a requirement for 1,000 users to view their static reports simultaneously, at the start of business every Monday morning. The customer did not want to spend a large amount on the many additional individual licenses needed or for an expensive broadcast license normally required when complete automatic electronic report distribution is performed. In addition, each time a different division or group requires a report it needs to be run again. There are 5 divisions and over 800 departments so the report must be run hundreds and hundreds of times in order to provide information to the majority of their users.

Solution:

The hospital can support all their users via normal web servers. Crystal Reports does not require a broadcast license if at least one manual step is involved in production or distribution of the electronic report. Therefore the client has written a small VB program under IIS to export the report to an empty directory and then looks at the users ID and Passwords to allow various levels of access. The desired report is written out as text files then OctoPDF and OctoBurst™ perform the following:

• The original report, run only once is burst (split) by division and department and other customer defined groupings.
• Converted automatically into searchable PDF.
• Stored by OctoPDF using the department name and/or other field made available through bursting. The data was mapped to secure predefined directories that had been set up by the customer's technical staff.

Typical Applications:

• Crystal Reports is used by many vendors to generate reports. Each end user typically requires a runtime license or for electronic distribution over the web, a broadcast license must be obtained. With OctoPDF and OctoBurst, almost any report can be burst into sub files and reconverted to PDF, allowing the customer many new low cost distribution options.
• Report distribution - OctoPDF sub files can be automatically emailed where the destinations, encryption, watermarking and user access are tailored by individual OctoPDF "profile files".

Products Required: OctoPDF™, OctoBurst™, RPM Remote Print Manager® optional