Nulls Groups: Discrepensies between CR vs CE

[bdukes]

Greetings:

I having issues with Null Groups showing up when a report is ran within CR(9.2), but not when the report is run in CE(10).

The following formula is for a group within the report:

if isnull({CLARITY_EPM.PAYOR_NAME}) then "SELF PAY"
else {CLARITY_EPM.PAYOR_NAME}

When the report is viewed in CR, I get something like the following:
--------- -----
SELF PAY 23
MULT DENTAL 89
GENERIC DENTAL 67
-----
179
When the report is executed and viewed within CE, I get the following:
--------- -----
MULT DENTAL 89
GENERIC DENTAL 67
-----
156

I have read a lot of posts regarding Nulls, but haven't found any where something works in CR, but not in CE. The DB is SQL2000. Hoping someone has seen this before and can point me in the right direction.

Thanks,
Brent

 

[synapsevampire]

You may have different settings within CR, such as convert nulls to default value.

I generally overengineer my null checking just in case:

if isnull({CLARITY_EPM.PAYOR_NAME})
or
{CLARITY_EPM.PAYOR_NAME} = "" then
"SELF PAY"
else
{CLARITY_EPM.PAYOR_NAME}

Note that the null check should be first.

-k

 

[bdukes]

synapsevampire:

Thanks for the reply. I have tried playing around with the different Report Option settings, but still no luck. I have also created several other reports (using different tables) that use the same formula as described above, but in these cases the way CR and CE outputs groups is exactly the same and as I would expect it to.

 

[bdukes]

Thanks for the suggestions synapsevampire.

On further investigation, it appears that the report is having trouble in Crystal Enterprise because it is unable to use Server Side grouping. The report is unable to use Server Side grouping in this case because it's using several different objects from two different databases. When I altered the report to use objects from only one database, the report grouping worked as expected. My theory is that the report works fine in CR when using objects from two different databases because the client (in this case CR) is performing the grouping.

I would be interested in hearing others take on this!