Inserting the column description into a report

[sensoukami]

Hello All!

We have (from a third-party) a crystal report that creates a data dictionary. Which is very good.

Unfortunately, my boss want to include the Column Description. And I dont know how to do that. I went to "Insert - Database Field" but cant seem to find what I need.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[Reebo99]

If by Column Description you mean the heading, insert a text field and type in the name. Reebo
Scotland (Going mad in the mist!)

 

[Naith]

I think by column descriptions sensoukami means like "varchar2(20)", "smallint(4)"; that kind of jazz.

Like Reebo says, you can type this into a text field, but if the datatypes are updated, this won't be dynamic.

Realistically, I think the best thing for you to do would be to create a reference table on the database that actually stored the attributes - the column names, the length, the datatype, null flags - all that in a table, and query the table in your report.

Unfortunately, without the intervention of some third party product - and if there's one out there that does this, I've never heard of it - you can't do present this information in Crystal without doing some work on the database.

Naith

 

[JonRob]

What database system are you using. If its Oracle I have a script that exports the tabel descriptions from the system tables.

 

[synapsevampire]

Create a View or SP on the database which extracts what you need and use that.

There should be plenty of canned scripts that you can download for virtually any database that will create a data dictionary, which should have whatever it is you need.

-k