Question Regarding Abilities of Crystal Reports

[shayne]

X-) Hello all, I have a question that I at first believed to be quite simple, until no one I asked, even teachers in classes I have and am taking could answer for me. I currently use R&R Report Writer to do reporting in my software product. The core use of my product simplified down to software terms is to allow users to create Databases of information in paradox. With R&R we could create reports off of a sample database and then on the fly tell our program to run the report on a different database. Just to clarify here, I am not asking how to do anything just if it is possible to do in Crystal. In my new product there are three databases that I need to access for reports simultaneously, and so what I need to do is setup a bunch of reports using temporary databases of the exact same structure as the three databases we create and add to in our product, but then on the users machine be able to tell crystal to run the report, but to use database "X:\blah\foo.db" as the first database referenced, use database "S:\foo\blah.db" as the second database referenced, and same for the the third database. Is this possible or am I wasting my time with crystal. The problem with using R&R for this is I can only do reporting on a single database, and I now need to do multi-database reporting.
Thanks for your time and I look forward to your response. Please respond directly to me at shayne@quotesoft.com. )

 

[troyu]

Yes, it should be possible to create a report with Crystal on more than one database, however the *.db databases must be able to have a relationship with one another. When creating the report with Crystal, be sure to link the 2 tables together using the built in relationship functionality in Crystal Reports. The 2 fields that you link are similar to links in Access.

Good luck. troy_underwood@owfg.com

 

[dcm]

Shayne,

Not only can Crystal do what you want but we've done it many times! Just like R&R (which we were previously the European trainer for) Crystal can cope with having a Paradox based report designed against some test tables and simply re-directing to the same structures in a live database. If you need any more just ask.

Same text e-mailed to you as requested David C. Monks
david.monks@chase-international.com

http://www.chase-international.com

Accredited Seagate Enterprise Partner

 

[kenhamady]

What I like about R&R is that you can change the data location via INI file or from the runtime launch file. So even via runtime you could simply change a text file and the report would look in the right spot.

In crystal it is a bit more involved. To change the location of tables you have to either:

1) Open the report and repoint the file in the new environment using Crystal Reports.

2) Have a front end application (like a VB app) pass the path to the report.

OR

3) Use the database option 'same as report' which forces the report to look locally. This last option won't work since you have 3 tables in possibly three different locations.

Ken Hamady

http://www.kenhamady.com/

Crystal Reports Training and a
Quick Reference Guide to VB/Crystal