Organizations using Crystal Enterprise™ or Seagate Info™ know how these products can help the business user get at the information they need. As these products are integrated into existing applications and processes, the return on investment grows exponentially. Crystal Decisions™ makes this level of integration possible by exposing over 500 API calls through their Software Developer Kit.

Real work experience with the Software Developer Kit has shown that for most integrations the API is too complex and time intensive to use. We have created a powerful toolkit, called SmartObjects™, to solve these issues so you can enjoy all the benefits of integrating this technology. SmartObjects™ takes the common tasks needed to integrate Crystal Enterprise™ and Seagate Info™ and makes them available in an intelligent object model that reduces the learning curve and development of the SDK by as much as 90%. Using the Software Developer Kit, tasks like logging on took over 30 API calls. Using SmartObjects it takes only one. SmartObjects reduces development time and lessens the learning curve associated with mastering the SDK. Application developers can seamlessly integrate enterprise web reporting into their applications without the loss of product functionality using SmartObjects™. This toolkit provides convenient and intelligent hierarchical object based access to over 500 API calls for Seagate Info™.

SmartObjects™ is easy to use and incorporates a hierarchical object model that can be easily traversed. The toolkit consists of COM/DCOM/MTS compliant objects and is designed to expedite custom software development projects that access Crystal Enterprise™ or Seagate Info™.

With SmartObjects™ developers can concentrate on the application and are shielded from the complexities of dealing with the Software Developer Kit. SmartObjects™ automates and simplifies the login, object browsing, reports scheduling, viewing, and administrative functions of Seagate Info™.

In addition to the SDK functionality, objects include meta-wrapper enhancements.

SmartObjects™ provides a standard, simplified interface to Seagate Info from any COM compliant language including C/C++, Microsoft Visual Basic®, Microsoft Visual InterDev®, Microsoft Office applications, Borland Delphi®, Lotus Domino/Notes®, Java (with a SmartObjects Java Connector™), and Active Server Pages (ASP).

SmartObjects for Seagate Info™ is shipped on a CD-ROM and includes binaries, toolkit documentation and sample source code. Samples include an example of an ASP Portal and a custom desktop in Visual Basic 6.

Another add-on to SmartObjects, the Java Connector, provides Java to DCOM. The Java to Corba bridge enables the use of SmartObjects™ by various applications in Microsoft and non-Microsoft environments. The SmartObjects Java Connector has been successfully tested and implemented on iPlanet, Jakarta, JRUN, NAS, WebObjects, WebSphere, and others.