Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns Why Crystal Reports? An alternative to Report Builder (And hashing our your own).

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns WHY? Report Builder is no longer supported in OpenEdge 10 –PRINTRB and PRNTRB2 still supported –If you are not running OE10 and using Report Builder, it will be a lot easier make the conversion.

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns What you will learn Advantages Disadvantages How to get started Examples –Pure Crystal Reports –Run from 4GL Questions?

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns ADVANTAGES: FREE 30 TRIAL VERSON! Unlimited Runtime licenses available! Server and Enterprise Linux versions Third Party Support –User groups (BusinessObjects.com) –Books Crystal Report 10 The Complete Reference Crystal Report 11 The Complete Reference (Not yet released.) Check out Amazon.com!

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns Easy Report Design Allows Editing While Previewing –C–Change where items appear –C–Change filters –C–Change fonts –A–Add / drop objects –D–Drop DB or formula field into a text box –S–Supports Drill Down –S–Support for SUB-REPORTS –S–Static or Dynamic Reports ADVANTAGES:

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns We talked about drill down, but what is it? Drill down is used when information can be grouped together, such as customer transactions. –Header Information (May or not show ) Detailed transactions (Here is where you drill down, Hidden) –Footer information with totals (Shows on report, with Drill Down turned on). –Example: Sales Tax Report

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns ADVANTAGES: You can pass parameters to Crystal Reports or have the report prompt you for parameters with –Default values –Drop down list –Caution! Strings are strings, and numbers numbers! No direct way to import values from a report, but in a round about way, you could export values from Crystal Reports back to 4gl, as in a spread sheet.

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns ADVANTAGES: Export to various formats –PDF, CSV and Many more, see.dll sheet Use Crystal or Basic syntax if {EOM.Over120} - Pay and Neg Chgs} < 0 then (if {EOM.Over90} - {EOM.Over120} - Pay and Neg Chgs} <= 0 then 0 else {EOM.Over90} - {EOM.Over120} – Pay and Neg Chgs}) else {EOM.Over90} Viewed reports are ready to run, no re-compiling unless you want to before printing a report.

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns ADVANTAGES: Support for a 4GL Viewer –View report without leaving 4GL –Change printer settings –Refresh data –Support for drill down Example (Sales tax summary)

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns ADVANTAGES: Business View (Server and Enterprise) –Define your own field names –Allow end users to write their own reports without losing security. No need to know SQL (But it helps) Ok. That’s fine. But what are the disadvantages ?

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns Disadvantages Cost (from the web as of 9/28/05) –Standard User ($195.00) –Professional Edition ($495.00) –Developer Edition ($595.00, Includes Runtime) –Crystal Reports Server ($7,500, 5 users & 1 Developer) –Crystal Reports Enterprise Requires Connection to DB –Usually ODBC –May require SQL permissions be set

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns Disadvantages Limited support from Progress Runs slower than native 4GL Limited array support Character data must match format length Table name restrictions (Cu-Ma converts to Cu_Ma) Writing a 4GL filter is tricky

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns Disadvantages In 4GL you would code: RB-Filter-Value = “Refth.Trans-Date >= StartDate AND Refth.Trans-date <= EndDate “ Becomes:

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns Disadvantages Rb-Filter-VAlue = "~{Refth.Trans-date} in Date (" + STRING(YEAR(startDate),"9999") + ", " + STRING(MONTH(StartDate),"99") + ", " + STRING(DAY(StartDate),"99") + ")" + " to Date (" + STRING(YEAR(EndDate),"9999") + ", " + STRING(MONTH(EndDate),"99") + ", " + STRING(DAY(EndDate),"99") + ")".

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns Disadvantages But you can COPY the SQL code from Crystal Reports and build your 4GL code based on it.

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns How to get started Need to create an SQL connection with DBA provileges. Create an ODBC connection with a name that will be used i.e. For Crystal Report Start Crystal Reports Connect via the ODBC connection Drag and drop fields

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns How to get started If you going to use the RunTime: You will need the install and register the viewer. Install the merge modules on the client using an install program like InstallShield. The key with BOXI is Redistributables!

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns

Print Crystal Report Viewer To get a copy of the Print Crystal Report.w and include files, Check the VAPUG web site. They will be posted later. Very general questions can be ed to: The.i file was written by Youssif Shanshiry. (Many thanks to him for his help.)

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns Something to look at P55350 How to display … via 4GL and Crystal Report Viewer ActiveX P Unable to add CR 11 ActiveX Controls P How to refresh a report automatically using 4GL… P30894 How to display array fields… P84955 How to modify selection criteria with the RecordSelectionFormula property P How to override the Select Expert P7843 How to configure a secondary SQL Broker

Dennis Voegler Bay Country Lawns QUESTIONS ?