Seagate Crystal Reports has been offering 32 bit Lotus and Domino connectivity since Release 5 of their product. At that time, connectivity with Lotus Notes was performed using the standard Notes SQL ODBC driver. In addition, the only option for delivering a reporting interface was to build Crystal Reports into Lotus Notes client applications with the Crystal OCX. Several developers, myself included, found the lack of technical information and support from Seagate with regard to Lotus Notes rather frustrating.

However, with each successive release of Crystal Reports, Seagate has improved both the speed and functionality of its Notes connectivity. In version 7.0, they finally offered something many Domino shops were waiting for: support for a Domino-based Web reporting system. Their newest release, Crystal Reports 8, has added many new features, as well as improved the overall performance of the Web server. Their Web site can be found at http://www.seagatesoftware.com/homepage.

In this first article in a series on Seagate Crystal Reports 8, I'll discuss the installation requirements, the supported Web servers, the installation basics, and the NTFS File Permissions. By the end of this series, you'll have learned how to install and configure Seagate Crystal Reports 8 Web server to run with Lotus Domino R5. Of course, this article assumes the reader has some familiarity with Crystal Reports (creating reports with Reports Designer) and ODBC, and has a general knowledge of Domino Web administration.

Installation requirements
The minimum system requirements for Crystal Reports are as follows:

• Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0 or higher;
• 32MB of RAM;
• Minimum 30MB of hard drive space;
• Maximum 210MB of hard drive space (full installation, including Web components).

Supported Web servers
In addition, the Web Component Server requires Windows NT Workstation or higher, depending on which Web server you are running. The following Web servers are supported in Crystal Reports 8:

• Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 2.0 or later;
• Microsoft Personal Web Server;
• Netscape Enterprise Server;
• Netscape FastTrack 2.0 or later;
• Any CGI compliant Web server (Domino, etc.).