May 13, 2008 at 4:18 am
hi guyz
i have a question here, i need to start development crystal reports, what do i need to know or do.
i've mastered Reporting services, a bit of ActiveReport.NET and MS Access reporting.
your input will greatly help
May 14, 2008 at 11:30 am
I've worked with Crystal Reports through several versions. If you know Reporting Services and Access Reporting you will have no issues converting to CR. The Crystal syntax is very simple to learn. I would say the most difficult aspect of CR is formulas and sub reports. Using a lot of formulas in a report can be a bit of a pain especially when you need sub totals and grand totals. In some cases, I have created a reporting view in SQL Server that contains calculated values etc... This will ease the pain of using CR formulas. Formatting/Grouping is very simple. I would say scan a reference book then jump in and go for it.
May 15, 2008 at 12:35 am
thanks for the input, i'll sure give it a go....... can you give me any links where i can get reference books??
May 15, 2008 at 9:07 am
I'm not sure what version you will be using but the complete reference series serves as a pretty good resource. Good luck.
May 16, 2008 at 7:52 am
The major beef I have had with CR 8.0, 8.5, 9.0 was orphaned headers when using groups, i.e. the columns names were printed at the bottom of the page and then - on the next page - the first and consecutive rows of data. Plus radical changes from one major revision to the next one. Yes, 8.5 reports work properly under 9.0 but you have to learn another way of doing things.
June 24, 2008 at 2:17 am
hi guys
thanks for the responses and references it's helped and i've started using crystal and yes it's a pain working with formulas when you have to create grandtotals by i managed to get my way through.
one thing i need to know is when you have a subreport is it posible to hide the headings when there's no data in the subreport??
thanks in advance
June 25, 2008 at 3:04 am
Yes you can can suppress the main page header but there is a little bit of a workaround needed.
You have to create a second page header in the main report and then use conditional suppression on these page headers.
check out http://www.experts-exchange.com/Databases/Crystal_Reports/Q_22042165.html
(scroll towards the bottom for the answers)
let me know if you come right. I have other examples that may help you
Ronald
July 2, 2008 at 7:28 am
I've been writing Crystal Reports for 8 years now, and besides having to work around a number of issues (like the orphaned record parts when a Group Footer splits across a page mentioned by SSC Journeyman), I've found it important to apply updates. In fact, one monthly hot fix was over 1GB in size! Just make sure you apply the correct one for your product, and of course any given fix could break something else. Also, be prepared to search the internet, not just the official support site. I've often found help in a general search and found nothing on the BO support site (but then, I also seem to be "search challenged").
Some specific ideas:
1. Never reference database objects directly on a report. Create a simple formula for each then use it. This way if your data source changes you have one set of formulas to change then you're done. No searching high & low for every time you referenced something directly.
2. Do everything you can in your database, using a stored procedure. Let SQL Server do the hard work, and let your report work quickly & efficiently. This also allows you to create a user ID for the SPs to limit any potential exposure to the tables.
3. Take the time to do something right, then use it for every report. For instance, I wrote an Address Display formula that does a reasonable job of putting all the possible parts together.
July 15, 2008 at 7:00 am
hi
i wonder if you could help me with this one, i'm going nuts here cause i can't seem to figure out where the problem is:
i have a report with parameter values which has a list of 289 to select from, the query works fine in sql but in the report it's not showing all the values in the dropdown.... does the report have limited number of records for parameters??
July 15, 2008 at 11:59 am
Not a reply to your last question, just additional comments on CR.
1. As for searching the Business Objects knowledge base, good luck ! I either get 600 links or none at all ... What a mess. Plus, you have to know the terms used in CR or your search will probably fail.
2. I wholeheartedly approve of using stored procedure and just let CR use the records supplied by the stored proc. This goes back to versions 8 and 8.5, where you could not supply a search parameter to use in a WHERE clause. Yes, you filter the output, but instead of using a SQL statement returning the few records you wanted, CR loaded ALL the records without using the WHERE clause and deciding ITSELF what was to be printed or not. This scheme could tie the user's PC for several minutes. However, using a stored procedure made it extremely fast. (OK, the lack of parameters for a WHERE clause went away with CR 9, but ...)
3. Also, to add insult to injury, when I entered an SQL statement to CR 8 and 8.5, it would remove all the line breaks before storing it. Trying to read back the SQL statement for debugging or modifications was quite a chore on long SQL statements.
4. CR 9 also has its quirks. You can only use in the SQL statement the parameters you created in CR. And if one such parameters was used by CR itself but was not required for the stored proc, then CR 9 smart-*** would erase the parameter not used in the SQL statement. But all you had to do was to enter the unneeded parameters in the SQL statement and just comment out the parameter, then it would stick. For instance an extra parameter not need by the stored procedure might be a description to be placed in a header, which makes little sense to have the stored proc return it for each and every record.
Regards
July 15, 2008 at 12:08 pm
About orphaned headers.
My trick is to first use a GROUP a band that is high enough to contain not only the header but also ONE record. That band has the UNDERLAY SECTIONS BELOW and the KEEP TOGETHER options turned ON.
A second band for the same group is inserted below and its height is the height required to print the header information plus some (not much) vertical space between the header and the record. The UNDERLAY SECTIONS BELOW option must be set to OFF.
The keep together option will force the the header group to print on the next page if there is not room enough for the first band at the bottom of the page.
Now I am curious. Is there another method of ensuring against orphaned headers ?
July 16, 2008 at 12:25 am
thanks for the input, though in my case i'm using a dropdown which has a list of 289 records a user has to select from but when populating not all the list is being populated but less..
July 17, 2008 at 10:08 am
You can sign up for a periodic Crystal Reports newsletter from this guy: ken@kenhamady.com
He does sell stuff but this is not an ad for him.
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