Crystal Reports Outer Joins

[janemaritz]

I'm a newbie to Crystal and MAS90, but have done a lot of report writing and development in the past.

Is it true that you can use only one left outer join with these programs per report? If so, how do you write decent reports with acceptable performance?

Example: I need a report that shows all vendors [vendor table], the payment amount [payment table], the 1099 amount [1099 table], and a comparison between the two amounts, with differences highlighted. A vendor may have a payment amount with no 1099 amount, or a 1099 amount with no payment amount (1099 adjustment).

With a normal reporting solution, I would use a left outer join from the vendor table to the two other tables. Since I can't do this, I've tried using a subreport for the payment amount. I can do a calculation of the difference in the subreport, but still would like to do the following:
*Do the calculation in the main report,
*Format a section with shading on the main report based on the subreport data, and
*Get report subtotals and totals of the subreport data on the main report.

Also, the performance using the subreport is awful.

Thanks,
Jane