Open to suggestions... ASP and Crystal

[Jacob438]

Allright guys, I'm open to suggestions here. I am working on (among several things) creating a web site that will display a Crystal Report. I am somewhat familiar with ASP. I have Crystal Reports Version 8.5. I also have Visual Studio 6 and .NET (I prefer 6).

I am familiar with the fact that there are several ways to do this, (using ActiveX using DLL, or object library), I am curious as to which one will give me the greatest flexibility and security, with ease of use.

Eventually I'd like to be able to go like this:
\\crystalserver\report.asp?username=AAA&password=BBB&startdate=08012002&enddate=08292002
and so on, you get the point, basically I want the option to pass in parameter fields in the query string. But if they are not passed, I'd like the user to be prompted for them.

Sorry if this seems like a ridiculous question, I'm just looking for suggestions based on what you guys prefer... because if I need help along the way, I'll at least know where to look. I'm pretty new to Crystal, and so far I'm not so impressed, anyways, thanks in advance,

Jacob438

 

[Jacob438]

One more question... when I was using Crystal Reports 7, it came with a Crystal Reports Web Server component. Is there something like that in CR 8.5? Again I am really struggling to find a lot of documentation on this. If anybody has any goods links, please pass them along. Thanks in advance,

Jacob438

 

[chelseatech]

jacob,

I assume with your CR8.5 you got the Crystal Enterprise CD.

That has a lot of documentation on how to connect to your reports.

You can use a URL...

http://server/folder/myreport.rpt?prompt0=this&prompt1=that

(but that method doesn't support multivalue or range parameters. Also, if your DB has a Userid and password, then it needs to be in the URL.

Better to use Crystal Enterprise. I'd recommend the Crystal Web Request...

http://myServer/myVirtualDirectory/viewrpt.cwr?id=152

This picks up the default parameters and Db logins from the entry in the Enterprise Database. You just need a way to identify the report ID's in Enterprise.

Check out the Developer documentation in Crystal Enterprise. There is some good stuff there. Editor and Publisher of Crystal Clear

http://www.chelseatech.co.nz/pubs.htm

 

[Jacob438]

hey chelseatech,

thanks for your replies to this one and my other post. I would really like to use the Crystal Enterprise because it supports more functionality, including being able to select multiple values for parameters. However, I am quite frustrated with a few things...

1. Where is the viewrpt.cwr file? I can't find it on my system and I did install CE.
2. Dealing with the APS logon thing seems like a pain and it's ridiculous
3. how do I specify the report ID?

I'm going to keep looking at the documentation and hopefully I'll find answers to these questions soon, but I've been looking for the last few days for answers to these questions and I am still stumped, either I'm really slow or they make it hard to find answers... maybe both

Thanks again,

Jacob438

 

[lyanch]

Answering backwards:

3. To find the ID:

After adding a report through the CMC the properties tab will show a "file name" section that will look like this:

frs://Input/78/178/16625dc39ede38.rpt

report ID in this case is 178.

General format

//Input/subsection number/ReportID/report name (that the CMC gives it).

2. To avoid the logon screen... set up a guest account with no password, pass those values in the URL if you are using a URL to connect.

1. The basic syntax for finding the viewer...

http://server

name/web share for CE/viewrpt.cwr?ID=REPORTID&apsname=APSNAME&apsuser=guest&apspassword=&apsauthtype=secEnterprise&promptex-your parameters...

The viewer selected will be the default viewer for the "guest" account in this case.

There are a lot of people better at the paths through the csp pages, but this should get you started.

Lisa

 

[Jacob438]

cool thanks, that's what I was looking for,

Jacob438