Can I use Crystal Report to extract the data from the Oracle?? 3

[qajussi]

Can I use Crystal Report to extract the data from the Oracle??

I have a large set of records in the Oracle database.
I was wondering if you can the Crystal report to extract them.

What I need to is extract the records from the oracle and display them into the XML file..
I am looking for a third party tool which will help me to extract the data.

Can I do this and if this is smart way to go??
Thank you very much for your help in advance.

 

[lyanch]

Yes you can extract the data you want with crystal, yes you can export that to XML. You do not, however, have a lot of control over what the xml looks like. I have to use a transform for all teh XML I get from crystal to put it into a format I can use.

Lisa

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Although Crystal is primarily a reporting tool, it can export to XML - so you could design a report that accesses the Oracle data and then export it to XML..

( Also, depending on the Oracle version, you may be able to do that directly from Oracle itself..Check the docs for info on the XML and XDK APIs..)

 

[qajussi]

Thank you guys!

Over the weekend I talked to a friend who just started to use the crystal reports to create web pages from the sql server database.

He showed me how easy it was to connect to the database and select records he wanted..

I have a pretty large oracle database(from 9i) and I probably could extract the records using some scriping languages.

There are about 80 tables and I have to extract the related records from different tables.

I am looking around if there are any third party tools which can be used to ease the process..

I need to put them in XML files.

For example)

<XML>
<agent>
<agent1>anthrax</angent1>
<content>dfdfdf</content>
<agent2>SARS</agent2>
<content>ddffdfd</content>
....
</agent>

This is very simplified example.
But I am not looking to create complicated xml files.

Do you think Crystal reports can do this??
Is it a proper tool to extract the data from the oracle and disply them in XML??

Do you recommned any other tools which you think are appropriate for my small project??

Thank you very much

 

[qajussi]

Lisa,

I need to render the XML files with XSLT afterward
to style the format.

Other than do you think the crystal report can be a proper tool for me?
Thank you again.

 

[qajussi]

TurkBear,

I am not an oracle expert.
The reason I like what I saw from the Crystal report was the it gives the GUI to select the field names of the tables...

Each record probably have some data on each table of 80 tables.

So I am sure I can write scripts to extract them.

But I would like to avoid it because can't spend too much time on this one.

Thanks.

 

[lyanch]

You can look at the XML you get and see if it works for you. It gives lots of formatting etc. info. It is truely XML for the *report* not just the data. If it is just the GUI that you want to make life easier, you can always copy the SQL from the show SQL window to use elsewhere. For general Oracle work, my preferred tool is TOAD Free.

Lisa

 

[qajussi]

Thank you Lyanch.

Yes I am just looking for a tool to make the extract easier.

I will go and look at the TOAD Free..
Thanks millions.

 

[Johnsf]

You could write your report with the XML tags in the report itself and then export it as plain text..... thats what Ive done when I needed data from Oracle extracted as XML and it works just fine.

 

[qajussi]

Thanks Johnsf!
I tried Toad. It looks great.
I ended up using scrpt to write SQL to extract the data from the ORacle.

I liked what I saw in Crystal Report. You didn't have to write many SQL queries. You could do all in GUI like MS Access's wizard.

I will play around with it and learn more about it.
Thanks millions.