[thelist] Crystal Reports Question

[Bob Thomson]

Scott,

I've battled my way through this problem in the past, never quite
understanding why a product that is meant to be aimed at enterprise level
reporting needs makes it so difficult to work with a dev / test / production
setup.

The solution that we came to was to feed the data into the report at
run-time. In our case we were using stored procedures to get the info out of
a SQL Server DB. We'd hook the report up to our test DB in the Crystal
Reports Designer but then at runtime we use something like:

Dim Report As New crMyReport ' Crystal Reports Designer
Report.Database.SetDataSource myRecordset ' Feed in the recordset
CRViewer91.ReportSource = Report ' Display the report in the viewer

To feed the report data obtained from a Data Access Layer which serves the
whole application and which can be easily pointed at different data sources
for development, testing and deployment.

Unfortunately I also remember that implementing the above technique took
100's of man hours of trying various different settings / configurations
before it started working and that the reporting area of the application
remains the most unstable part of the application to this day.

We've actually switched to SQL Reporting Services now, although of course
that has brought along foibles of it's own.

Hope this is of use, cheers,

Bob 

*********

Bob Thomson
Technical Director
NKD

http://www.nkd-webmedia.co.uk

0131 220 8252 (Switchboard)
0131 220 8352 (Fax)
0785 575 9009 (Mobile)

One St. Colme Street
Edinburgh
EH3 6AA 

This email may contain confidential information intended solely for use by
the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient of this
communication you should destroy it without copying, disclosing or otherwise
using the contents herein. Please notify the sender immediately of the
error. Internet communications are not necessarily secure and may be
intercepted or changed after they are sent. nkd does not accept liability
for any such changes. If you wish to confirm the origin or content of this
communication, please contact the sender using an alternative means of
communication. This communication does not create or modify any contract.

All incoming emails should be scanned for viruses, trojans and worms. NKD
cannot be held responsible for any loss or damage resulting directly or
indirectly from receipt of this communication.

NKD is the trading name of nkd webmedia ltd, a limited company registered in
Scotland. Registered number: 215248. Registered Office: 11 Atholl Crescent,
Edinburgh, EH3 8HE. VAT Registration: 774 8815 77.

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Scott Dexter
Sent: 08 September 2004 03:56
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] Crystal Reports Question

> 
> E.g. the Development PC was pointed to the Dev DB. The local Test
> Server 
> was pointed to the Test DB and the Production Server was pointed to
> the 
> Production DB.

In my testing, I've saved the report, changed where the DSN points
to, reopened the report to watch it ignore the new settings and
connect to the server as saved with the report. Not fun. Also
hindering this is I'm now in a large shop, and the "Release
Management" people won't accept something that has to have different
settings in different places (or some contraints close to that). Ugh.
I did find some documentation leading me to actually write some code
and set the properties inside of VB between opening the report and
running it. I think I'm on the right course, except I have no idea
which version of CR these were saved with (nobody else does either),
and Crystal changed up the runtime object model between versions 8
and 9. Fun, eh?

At any rate, I think I'm barking at least in the direction of the
right tree; I'll post what I came up with ....

sgd
-- 

News! - Evolt.org conference for web professionals. 
17-19 September 2004 in Toronto, Canada. 
Details at http://TOevolt.org

* * Please support the community that supports you.  * *
http://evolt.org/help_support_evolt/

For unsubscribe and other options, including the Tip Harvester 
and archives of thelist go to: http://lists.evolt.org 
Workers of the Web, evolt !