I have never seen such an bad documented commercial product like Crystal Reports Server 11. It is a real nightmare to use its Java API for programming and scheduling reports. Even those nothing-saying error messages from Oracle are rich of information compared to Crystals one.

I do not know, why companies buy and rely on software, that is in such a worse usable state. The time needed to utilize the Crystal Reports Server Java API and fiddle with all these shortcommings in terms of usability and documentation would be better spend in understanding, using and enhancing an Open Source solution. All the time needed to understand, all the work needed to create a convenience library and API to make Crystal Reports Server usable from Java could be given back, if Crystal Reports Server were a Open Suorce product. But it isn't - so please if you are a decision maker - please use an Open Source product for reporting. You will need some effort if you plan to use it programmatically (from Java), but this will be necessary anyway.

</rant>