Search results matching tag 'Crystal Reports'

Need help with Crystal Reports? Look here!

Jan Schreuder — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:36:00 GMT

Because I blog about Crystal Reports occasionally, and created a helper class to assist in integrating it into .Net applications, I get a lot of questions from people that have problems running their reports. Especially in production environments after they deploy the reports. Unfortunately, I'm not a Crystal Expert. I use it in my applications but that's how far it goes. I don't have all the answers people might want.

But I do know where you can find information about Crystal and where you do find answers to any problems you might have. I created a blog post a few weeks ago to sum up a number of resources that can help you find answers to almost all of your Crystal Reports issues. Click here to read that post.

SAP is annoying me

Jan Schreuder — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:26:00 GMT

I never had to do anything with SAP my self, other than interfacing from a .Net application. But since SAP has purchased Business Objects, I find I have to deal with them more and more. Why? Well, since SAP bought Business Objects, who bought Crystal Decisions a while back, they are the owner of Crystal Reports. I've posted about crystal on several occasions (see link). I even posted an article on CodeProject.com where you can find my CrystalHelper class. And because of that, people ask me questions about issues they have with the helper class and Crystal Reports in general. I feel it my duty to help them as much as I can.

But SAP have thought it would be a good idea to redesign their entire site, making all my links virtually useless. And not just mine of course, but of thousands of others. The new site structure however is a fine example of making things disappear. It took me 15 minutes to find out where I could download the latest version of the merge modules for Visual Studio 2005. So for all you that are lost in the wonderfull world of SAP Crystal Reports, here are some starting points I managed to find:

Notes

Search SAP Business Objects Notes for Crystal Reports and Xcelsius products. Notes were known as Knowledge Base search and Knowledge Base Articles on the Business Objects web site.

Articles

Read SAP Business Objects articles, formerly known as Technical Papers on the Business Objects web site.

Downloads

Find Crystal Reports and Xcelsius service packs, hot fixes, critical updates, runtime packages, samples and utilities.

Product Guides

Find SAP Business Objects Product Guides on the SAP Help Portal under “Business Objects” in the top navigation.

Product Lifecycles

Find out about the Technical Support Lifecycle policy and end of life dates.

Forums: Read and post questions to the new forums.

UPDATE August 2, 2008

I found the download page for service packs, hot fixes, merge modules etc. It's here: https://websmp230.sap-ag.de/sap(bD1ubCZjPTAwMQ==)/bc/bsp/spn/bobj_download/main.htm

Deploying applications that use Crystal Reports for .Net

Jan Schreuder — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:28:05 GMT

I know, for a lot of Microsoft developers Crystal Reports (CR) is a no-go area. But I know that a lot of developers are using it, whether they like it or not. Because of my posts about CR, and more specifically my CrystalHelper class, I'm asked how to deploy applications that use the free version of CR that is shipped with various versions of Visual Studio.

This information is already available at support site for CR. In this post I will post links to that documentation as a reminder to myself, but also to help others that need help when deploying CR to client or server machines.

Register your version of CR

Although you are allowed to freely distribute the CR engine that is supplied with Microsoft Visual Studio, you still need to register that version. To do so, simply add a report to your application. CR will check if registration has already taken place. When this is not the case, CR will ask if you wish to register. Just follow the steps and registration will take place. Registration is free!

Register yourself as a CR developer at Business Objects

An important source of information for everyone using CR, as a developer or a report designer, is the Diamond Technical Community web site. When you register here, you get access to all the documentation available on CR. Most of the information I will link to in this post can be found here, the downloads for Merge Modules and Service packs.

CR as part of a VS 2002/2003/2005 project

For Visual Studio 2002/2003/2005, you are required to use merge modules. The current version of these modules can be found here:

Download merge modules for Visual Studio 2002
Download merge modules for Visual Studio 2003
Download merge modules for Visual Studio 2005

These downloads contain a number of merge modules. Which module is required for your setup depends on the reports you are deploying. A very comprehensive document that explains which modules to add and how to do so when you use Visual Studio 2002/2003 can be found here. Documentation on how to use the merge modules in Visual Studio 2005 is enclosed in the download of those merge modules.

CR as part of a VS 2008 project

The version of CR distributed with Visual Studio 2008 is actually the same as the one distributed with Visual Studio 2005. So for that version, simply follow the instructions for that version.

Building a redistributable package for VS 2005

For applications built with Visual Studio 2005, it might also be a good idea to have a Runtime Package as a custom action or a pre-requisite in your setup. There are some reasons for this:

In a network environment, these packages can be pushed by the network administrator
The embedded merge modules force you to rebuild the setup for your applications if you want to take advantage of fixes or service packs
The runtime package is not part of your setup and can be deployed once, rather than each time your application is installed.
Since the setup it is significantly smaller when the merge modules are omitted, the download of your setup takes less time.
Setup of your application is faster as it doesn't have to install the merge modules.

CR however does not provide redistributable packages for this version (or for Visual Studio 2002/2003) so I created one myself for use in my current project. For those interested, I followed this easy steps:

Once you have downloaded the merge modules for Visual Studio 2005, extract the file CrystalReports2005_x86 to the folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Merge Modules
Create a new Setup project and name it RedistCrystalReports2005_x86
Right-click the project name in the solution explorer and select Add -> Merge Module...
Select the merge module CrystalReports2005_x86.msm file from the dialog box
Build the project

And you're ready. A redistributable for CR reports to support the applications you build using Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.

I'm sure this can also be done for Visual Studio 2002/2003 but I have not been able to test that. But the steps would be similar, with the exception of license information which is required for these versions of Visual Studio.

Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005 deployment trouble

Jan Schreuder — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:53:00 GMT

I just spent 4 hours of figuring out why the reports we developed using Crystal Reports would not show the graphs after being deployed to our production server. We checked everything from access rights to proper installation of Crystal reports on the server. Below are a few things you may want to check when you need to deploy a .Net 2.0 web application that integrates Crystal Reports:

Deploy Crystal components

First, and rather obvious, is to make sure the correct version of Crystal components are installed on the server. If you have the Visual Studio SDK installed, you can look for CRRedist2005_x86.msi, which is in this folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\CrystalReports on your machine. Running that installation on the server will make sure all components required for Crystal Reports are properly installed on your machine.

If you have a setup project for your web application, you can add a merge module to that project. Crystal Reports provides four merge modules for download at this location. Depending on your needs, you may need to add any combination of these to your setup project. Which module is required for your application can be found in this document on the Business Objects support site.

Web.Config settings

In order for a Crystal Reports viewer to work, the following settings must be added to the appSettings section in the web.Config file:

<add key="CrystalImageCleaner-AutoStart" value="true"/>

<add key="CrystalImageCleaner-Sleep" value="60000"/>

<add key="CrystalImageCleaner-Age" value="120000"/>

This will ensure that the temporary images for Crystal are removed when they are no longer required. The following setting must be added the the httpHandlers section.

<add verb="GET" path="CrystalImageHandler.aspx" type="CrystalDecisions.Web.CrystalImageHandler,

    CrystalDecisions.Web, Version=10.2.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692fbea5521e1304"/>

This is required, because otherwise all you will see is an empty box with a red cross in it.

aspnet_client files

Last, but certainly not least, check the aspnet_client folder in the root folder of your web site. This folder should contain a folder with the name CrystalReportWebFormViewer3. That folder must exist in the following path: system_web\2_0_50727. If that folder is not there, copy it from your local machine. It should be in the folder C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ASP.NETClientFiles.

Crystal Reports helper class updated.

Jan Schreuder — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 03:57:00 GMT

In this weblog, I've regularly posted examples of stuff I created to help me use Crystal Reports in .Net applications. To make life easier I created a small class library which contains the code from all the posts I've done sofar, as well as some new stuff. The class library can be used to handle Crystal Reports in a simple way. In the past weeks I've been adding functionality to support the version that's included in Visual Studio 2005. A full description of the functionality can be found in my CodeProject article about the CrystalHelper class.

Functionality offered by this class library

The class library handles the following general Crystal functionality:

Assign a database connection to the report.
Assign DataSet's to the report.
Print a report on the default printer.
Write the report to disk in one of the following formats:
1. Microsoft Word
2. Microsoft Excel
3. Rich Text
4. Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF)
Set values for report parameters

The class library also allows you to manipulate the Crystal Report Viewer control (WinForm only):

Show / Hide the status bar.
Show / Hide the tabs.
Change the report name shown on the tabs.

A few examples will show you how easy it is to use Crystal Reports in .Net using this class library:

Sending a report to the default printer

using (CrystalHelper helper = new CrystalHelper(new CrystalReport1(),

                "Server", "Database", "UserName", "Password"))

    helper.Open();

    helper.Print();

    helper.Close();

Writing a report to disk as an Adobe PDF file

using (CrystalHelper helper = new CrystalHelper(new CrystalReport1(),

            "Server", "Database", "UserName", "Password"))

    helper.Open();

    helper.Export(@"C:\Sample.pdf", CrystalExportFormat.PortableDocFormat);

    helper.Close();

The code is documented using XML tags. It is possible to generate documentation using NDoc or any other tool that can process the XML file created when you compile this code. Attached to this post is a zip file. It contains the sources to my CrystalHelper class and for a demo application that shows how you might use this helper.

New Business Objects Support site

Jan Schreuder — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 01:32:14 GMT

Business Objects have introduced a new web site, Diamond.businessobjects.com. Well not entirely new. But it has been up since 18 July 2006 so it's not old. The new support site is setup to provide information to developers on the Business Objects reporting solutions, such as Crystal Reports and Business Objects XI.

The information on this web site is divided into 3 main topics:

Each of these sections has an Overview section. From there you can reach the Forums, News and Media sections for these 3 main topics. The Develop and Integrate topic also has a Code Samples and Developer Library section. I have already searched the site for solutions to some of my problems (such as the one in this post) and so far always found a solution.

So check it out if you have a problem with a Business Objects product, or simply if you want more information about any of them.

Crystal Reports for .Net fails on Citrix / Terminal Server

Jan Schreuder — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 01:19:13 GMT

Yesterday I received an email from a colleague whom I worked with on a Windows Forms project a few months ago. We had implemented Crystal Reports in that application to generate reports and Word documents. The application has since been deployed several times without problems. But in his email yesterday, he mentioned that he couldn't run any of the reports. Every time he started a report, he got the error message "Load Report Failed".

The problem is caused by the fact that Crystal Reports stores some locations in the system registry. And normally, all applications are installed to the C: drive. But in most cases, a user that will access the application in a Citrix or Terminal Server environment will never have access to the C: drive. To solve it, you need to change a few registry settings using RegEdit. I found the solution to this problem here at the Crystal Reports Support Site.

How to: Set parameters on a Crystal Report

Jan Schreuder — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:05:00 GMT

It is possible to add parameters to reports. Using these parameters you can allow users to set date ranges, or pass other information to a report. Using the following method, you can set the parameters:

/// <summary>

/// Set value for report parameters

/// </summary>

/// <param name="name">Parameter name.</param>

/// <param name="value">Value to be set for the specified parameter.</param>

public void SetParameter(string name, object value)

    //Access the specified parameter from the parameters collection

    CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.ParameterFieldDefinition parameter = _reportDocument.DataDefinition.ParameterFields[name];

    // Now get the current value for the parameter and clear them

    CrystalDecisions.Shared.ParameterValues currentValues = parameter.CurrentValues;

    currentValues.Clear();

    // Create a value object for Crystal reports and assign the specified value.

    CrystalDecisions.Shared.ParameterDiscreteValue newValue = new CrystalDecisions.Shared.ParameterDiscreteValue();

    newValue.Value = value;

    // Now add the new value to the values collection and apply the

    // collection to the report.

    currentValues.Add(newValue);

    parameter.ApplyCurrentValues(currentValues);

How to: Tweak the Crystal Reports Viewer control

Jan Schreuder — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 04:29:00 GMT

Novita Wegbrands, a colleague of mine, needed to hide the tabs that are usually shown in the Crystal reports viewer. Either that, or change the default "MainReport" description. She found some code here on forums.belution.com/en/crystal that suited her needs. She sent the code to me (thanks Novita!) and I changed them a little so they would fit my library of Crystal Helper classes. So here's what we have now.

Show / Hide the status bar

By default, the Crystal Reports viewer shows a status bar at the bottom to indicate the current page, the total number of pages and the current zoom factor. But maybe you'd like to hide it. No problem, the following code will do just that:

public void ViewerStatusBar(CrystalReportViewer viewer, bool visible)

    foreach (Control control in viewer.Controls)

        if (control.GetType().Name.ToString() == "StatusBar")

            control.Visible = visible;

Show / Hide the tabs

The Crystal Reports viewer will also display tabs for the report. By default there is always one. But when it not possible to perform a drill-down in a report then this tab is virtually useless. Using the following code, you can hide those tabs:

public void ViewerTabs(CrystalReportViewer viewer, bool visible)

    foreach (Control control in viewer.Controls)

        if (control is PageView)

            TabControl tab = (TabControl)((PageView)control).Controls[0];

            if (!visible)

                tab.ItemSize = new Size(0, 1);

                tab.SizeMode = TabSizeMode.Fixed;

                tab.Appearance = TabAppearance.Buttons;

            else

                tab.ItemSize = new Size(67, 18);

                tab.SizeMode = TabSizeMode.Normal;

                tab.Appearance = TabAppearance.Normal;

The ItemSize that is created on the tab control is a default size. Because the SizeMode property is set to Normal, Crystal Reports will automatically scale the tab to fit the name.

Change the name of the tab

As stated before, the default name for the first tab is usually MainReport. It is possible to change this by using the following code:

Crystal Reports and Visual Studio

Jan Schreuder — Wed, 25 May 2005 08:55:00 GMT

I have used Crystal Reports in a number of .Net projects. It is shipped with Visual Studio 2003 and will also be part of Visual Studio 2005. If you want to use Crystal in your application, you will need to register the version that comes with Visual Studio. Registration of that version is free, and it get's you access to developers section on the Business Objects website.

Today I was asked to get a co-worker started with Crystal Reports and so I went looking for information. I soon discovered that a lot of interesting stuff is on MSDN, you just need to know where to look. All the information below, and more, can be found here on the Microsoft MSDN website.

Crystal Reports Reviewer's Guide

This reviewer's guide provides an overview of the features, power and ease of use of Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET. It advertises Crystal reports as follows:

Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET is the definitive out of the box reporting technology for use in .NET Windows and Web applications.

Getting Started Guide

This whitepaper provides step-by-step instructions on the details of generating and displaying reports in various deployment scenarios and application environments using Crystal Reports for Visual Studio.NET 2003. And you can download all the code for this guide here.

Interested?

I think everyone should be interested in Crystal Reports. It's easy to use, supported by Microsoft, and you can deploy your applications using the version in Visual Studio without a problem or licensing fee. I know Reporting Services are cool, but you need SQL Server to use it. And sometimes you have to work with Oracle, MySQL or even Access.

Those of you that have Visual Studio 2005 installed can quickly see what Crystal Reports has to offer. To do so, follow these steps:

From the file menu, select New Web Site.
In the dialog you should see ASP.NET Crystal Reports Web Site. Select that project type.
When Visual Studio has finished creating the project, press F5 to run the website.

You should see a pie-chart with sales figures for various countries. Click a section of the pie chart, to zoom in on the sales for a particular country. Crystal then shows another chart with the sales for that country specified by state or region. The demo report allows you to go 5 levels deep.

You can also print the report, using the print button on the webpage. Or export it, using the export button, to one of the following formats: Acrobat PDF, Word, Excel 97-2000, Rich Text Format.