Crystal Reports on the web

Looking at the huge number of links, my code snippets and samples that I've accumulated during my journey with Crystal Reports and Report Server (RAS), I've realized that something should be done with all that. So, for all who are struggling with similar problems I've faced while pursuing that elusive goal of putting Crystal Reports on the web, I will put as much information here as I can ...

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Changing datasource in Crystal .NET

There is serveral ways to do that, depending on which version of Crystal, edition (standalone or not) and database (OLEDB, ODBC, XML, File based one...).
This is knowledge base article for VB.NET and Crystal Reports 9:

http://support.businessobjects.com/library/kbase/articles/c2010371.asp

Important part is looping through - tables that you have to loop through are not really table objects, but also views or stored procedures, depending of what exactly do you have as source.
Moreover, each and every subreport should be updated too with new datasource information.

Monday, September 20, 2004

Images in Crystal Report

This problem occurs when you want to add pictures into your report, like logos or similar ...
Add JPG to your report and beware, your report will increase many times more that you think it will, considering size of the picture. Crystal Decisions confirms the problem in this knowledge base article:
http://support.businessobjects.com/library/kbase/articles/c2014600.asp

As for solving a problem, this is the only thing I could find on their site:

http://support.businessobjects.com/library/kbase/articles/c2008518.asp

So, convert your picture to BMP manually, and it should create smaller file than if you leave conversion to Crystal Report to do it...
I would like to hear about other solutions too...