Crystal 2008

I'm working on migrating our current solutions for a Crystal Reports viewer to version 2008. We're running OE 10.1C although I need to provide a v9.1e compatible solution (don't ask!). Truble is all API and COM support has been stripped in version 2008 of Crystal and I can't see a way forward. Has anyone worked on this sort of thing? Can anyone provide some pointers for getting started. This is turning into a nightmare.


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OE 10.2B03 Linux DB Windows

OE 10.2B03 Linux DB Windows Clients

We migrated 12 months ago approx. We now use Crystal 2008 runtime viewer for clients.
From ABL we use write-xml at runtime to generate xml(s). You start with your Crystal 2008 development and use those xml's as a datasource.

Once you have those 2 elements created - you need a report viewer. We used a .NET CR viewer to the Crystal control. You can pass a few vars to your CR viewer, but not as much as with activex. The .NET CR was created using Visual Studio. VS has a Crystal Reports plugin that makes it easier than creating from scratch.

We started this with OE10 - not sure if v9 Progress can generate an XML as easily as v10. All we need was write-xml after you create your temp-tables in ABL.

At client install time - our ERP has provided a client installer that checks to see if crystal runtime 2008 is installed. But you can just roll this out manually to your clients.

Note: we had the same difficulties with trying to using activex with crystal 2008. We've used activex controls less and less over the past few years.


Cringer's picture

Thanks for the reply - the

Thanks for the reply - the first lead I've actually had so far. We're still very old school and use csv's as data source. We're not migrating that as we have hundreds of reports! :)

I think the general consensus at the moment is that we're going to take a step back to Crystal 11 and use the API stuff that I understand is still there and then tackle the 2008 change once we actually have the time to do it justice!


hutegger's picture

Step-by-step migration

In 2006/07 I've worked with an application that used Crystal Report for reports and forms. One approach we were looking at, was to provide the data to CR using WebServices. That way, an AppServer could do the heavy lifting in terms of gathering the data, and Crystal could focus on making it look pretty.

If you are using csv's, it might be possible to create an AppServer callable wrapper for the programs that create the CSV. If needed, the output could be modified to create an XML file instead of the CSV. V9 doesn't have XML-WRITE, as much as I know. So you'd have to write it manually - but a single dynamic procedure (with a dynamic temptable handle as input parameter) could do that for any temp-table you're using already. So only a RUN statement is needed, instead of the output as CSV...

In any case, it looks like you have to do something to your 100s of reports. And, it looks like you won't be able to do it in one step. Going back to CR11 seems the only solution to get your users up and running quick, but that is a time-bomb, as you know - CR11 won't be supported for all too long...

In 2006/07 I was working with a SW engineer in the Caribbean - a kind of near-shoring. She helped us with such mass changes. We in the US developed a prototype for the approach we wanted to take, and, after explaining it to her, we sent her one program after the other in the order of importance. She made the adjustements, and after our QA checks we implemented the modified programs one by one.

The advantage was, that our US engineers could focus on the really important stuff, while at the same time, the time-bomb was defused step by step. Since she's working in the Caribbean, she was able to work for a very, very affordable rate, while still in the same timezone (EST)...

Just a thought...

Thomas

"The Bitterness of Poor Quality Remains Long After the Sweetness of Low Price Is Forgotten..."


see KB 20725 for v9 creation of xml file

it's a long procedure - but works in v9 and v10.
or you could use this procedure for v9 and check for progress version in your print routine. if v10 the write xml routine is much smaller.

Appserver is more expensive in v9, but the price has come down in v10, so that is something to look at.

We use Crystal for forms only - not sure if I would want to use this for all of our reports.