Crystal Products - Software Releases

The following information outlines some of the services available to Crystal users from Business Objects directly. Chase International will keep you informed of the latest information via the quarterly newsletters and website. Chase International is able to provide you with information to determine where such fixes, hot fixes and packs may be of benefit to you and, wherever possible, the impact of those in your environment.

Fixes and Enhancements
A fix is one or more software modules that have been changed in order to resolve an issue. Fixes are usually compiled and distributed through a product maintenance release. An issue must be tracked before a fix will be provided. An enhancement is additional product functionality that has been requested directly, or through Chase International, to Business Objects. An enhancement is not considered to be a technical support issue and therefore is not recognised as an incident. Business Objects will only provide release fixes or enhancements for versions that have not yet reached their Business Objects product lifecycle end date.

Hot Fixes
Hot Fixes are file updates from Business Objects. They have not been through a full QA regression test cycle but have been deemed to fix the reported problem identified by a particular Business Objects Escalation or Track ID.

Hot fixes are released monthly by Business Objects on the first day of business of the month and include all the Hot Fixes that were released in the previous month. Hot Fixes are cumulative and contain the most recent versions of the component files. Hot Fixes can be downloaded from Business Objects at: http://support.businessobjects.com/fix/hot/mhf/default.asp.

Hot Fixes should always be tested before being used in a production environment.

Service Packs
A service pack is a collection of patches and updates from Business Objects that have been combined into a single package for installation. They will have been tested as a package and offer greater stability than individual patches.

Maintenance Releases
Maintenance Releases are available to customers who have purchased annual product Maintenance from Business Objects. A maintenance release is a software package issued by Business Objects that contains one or more fixes to a current version but does not contain any new features. Versions remain the same but a new build number is issued.