Report Documentation??? 5

[crguy]

I have several clients with dozens of reports per client. The problem is that report reuse between clients leads to different versions of essentially the same report, with minor differences between them (section visibilities, name lengths, etc.) Does anyone have a good way to track these changes or have a system currently running to do version control?
Any ideas/advice would be greatly appreciated.
Kev

 

[kenhamady]

Other than the export to a Report Definiton File, there are 2 third party tools available (but I haven't tried them). The two that I know of are listed on the links page of my web site. One of them is talking about a tool to compare two rpt files, but it apparently isn't quite ready yet. Ken Hamady

http://www.kenhamady.com/

Crystal Reports Training/Consulting and a
Quick Reference Guide to VB/Crystal (including ADO)

 

[lester50]

We use Report Miner and have been very satisfied with the results. It provides much more complete information than the standard 'Export Report Definition' approach.

If you need to compare 2 reports, then their report-difference program is the only way to go.

I have not seen any version control system which does a decent job at contolling changes. jlester@lester.com

 

[kenhamady]

Report Miner still lists ReportDiff as "Coming Soon" on their web order page. Did your copy come with it? Ken Hamady

http://www.kenhamady.com/

Crystal Reports Training/Consulting and a
Quick Reference Guide to VB/Crystal (including ADO)

 

[lester50]

I was able to order it directly from their web page (

http://www.reportminer.com)

jlester@lester.com

 

[kenhamady]

I checked again today, and now the page shows the Report Diff available. Must have been a cached page in my browser. Ken Hamady

http://www.kenhamady.com/

Crystal Reports Training/Consulting and a
Quick Reference Guide to VB/Crystal (including ADO)

 

[StevenK]

CRGuy - I run something like this. I have four report templates and according to user selection - what data they want to see and what they want displayed set up the report through code (Delphi 5 in this case). You can set parameters in the report that indicate whether report objects are visible or not and pass them through code to set them accordingly. This way the reports are more easily maintained and can be modified through use of code.
Is this any use to you ?
Steve

 

[Sampson01]

Steve,
It would have been useful had I done that from the start, but unfortunately I didn't. I used Lester50's advice and bought Report Miner's products for version control now. They have a tool for comparing two Crystal Reports and I use it to tell me all the differences between versions. Works like a charm and solved my verion problems.
Thanks for the help
CRGuy

 

[KamalKhalil]

I have few questions to those who already used Report Miner in the fashion described in the first section above:
Can you have a list of all the Crystal reports a certain client is usig?
Can you have alist of all the clients that are using a certain Crystal report?
In what fashion these reports are saved?
Thank you Kamal Khalil
Sr. Client Technical Analyst
kkhalil@Houston.ds.adp.com

 

[StevenK]

CRGuy - sorry I joined the thread late. Maybe the advice will stand you in good stead for another such case in the future ?
Regards,
Steve

 

[lester50]

I like StevenK's approach and will try this one myself...

To Kamal, the report miner program does not do any reporting by client, by rather lets you compare reports to determine what is different. (sort of like VisiDiff or the SourceSafe Differences report).

I do not use it for keeping track of reports by client, but rather to identify differences between reports. While it is by no means a version control program like SourceSafe or StarBase, (we actually use SourceSafe), it is very useful in identifying what has changed once SourceSafe tells you that 'Binary Files Differ'. (Note we are talking about the utility called RptDiff from report miner - they have others.) jlester@lester.com

 

[Sampson01]

To all,
Thanks the responses, you have been very helpful.

To Kamal Khalil,
I just starting using Report Miner and it is not a version control system. Instead, I use it to get full documentation of my clients reports, which gets saved in a nice word document, and then can compare any number of reports between clients. This lets me know all the differences between my clients reports, and I find it especially useful for tracking report changes between my developers.

Again, thanks to all who replied
-CRGuy