Business objects CRYSTAL REPORTS 11 User Manual

Crystal Reports 11 User’s Guide

Crystal Reports 11

Trademarks

Patents

Business Objects, the Business Objects logo, Crystal Reports, and Crystal Enterprise are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects SA or its affiliated companies in the United States and other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Business Objects owns the following U.S. patents, which may cover products that are offered and sold by Business Objects: 5,555,403, 6,247,008 B1, 6,578,027 B2, 6,490,593 and 6,289,352.

Chapter 1 Introduction to Crystal Reports 11 21

About Crystal Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

About this guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Online help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Business Objects information resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Chapter 2 What’s New in Crystal Reports 11 25

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Powerful report authoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Improved usability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Expanded application-development capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

General description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Report Application Server (RAS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Report Designer Component (RDC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Crystal Reports .NET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Chapter 3 Installing Crystal Reports 11 33

Installing Crystal Reports 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Installation requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Installing Crystal Reports on a local machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Creating an installation point and installing from a network server . . . . . . 36

Creating an installation point for Crystal Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Installing Crystal Reports from a network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Customizing your installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Running a silent installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Upgrading Crystal Reports components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

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Chapter 4 Quick Start 45

Learning how to use Crystal Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Sample data - Xtreme.mdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Report Creation Wizards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Cross-Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Mailing Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

OLAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Quick start for new users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Before you begin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Creating the report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Record Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60

Grouping and sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Completing the report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Quick start for advanced users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Chapter 5 Report Design Concepts 73

Basic report design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Deciding on the content of the report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Stating the purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Determining the layout of the report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Finding the data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Manipulating the data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77

Determining printing area characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Developing a prototype on paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Chapter 6 Introduction to Reporting 81

Report creation options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Report Creation Wizards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Another report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

New report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Choosing data sources and database fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

The Database Expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

The Field Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85

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About the report design environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Design tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Preview tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

HTML Preview tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Creating a new report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Selecting the data source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Adding tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Linking multiple tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Placing data on the report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Formatting data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Record selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Grouping, sorting, and summarizing data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Using the drill-down option on summarized data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Using the zoom feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Inserting page headers and footers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Adding a title page to the report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Adding summary information to the report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Exploring reports and working with multiple reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

The Report Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

The Workbench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

The Dependency Checker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Opening and docking explorers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Beyond basic reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Chapter 7 BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository 117

What is the BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Work flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Accessing the BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Enterprise Items folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Adding folders to the repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Adding items to the repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Adding a text object or bitmap image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

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Adding a custom function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .124

Adding a command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Using repository objects in reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Adding a text object or a bitmap image to a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Adding a custom function to a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Adding a command to a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Adding a list of values to a parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Modifying objects in the repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Updating connected repository objects in reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Deleting items from the repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Using Undo in the repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Chapter 8 Designing Optimized Web Reports 131

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Scale with BusinessObjects Enterprise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Evaluation times for date functions in BusinessObjects Enterprise . . 134

Making the right design choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Using faster report formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Choosing between live and saved data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Designing summary reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Using subreports carefully . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Using other design elements effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Designing reports to maximize data sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Streamlining your reporting environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Selecting the fastest database and connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Using table indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142

Improving table-linking choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Using thread-safe database drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Using stored procedures for faster processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Using enhanced record selection formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Pushing down record selection—an example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Record selection performance tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Strategies for writing efficient record selection formulas . . . . . . . . . . 146

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Incorporating parameter fields into record selection formulas . . . . . 148

Using SQL expressions where appropriate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Improving grouping, sorting, and totaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Performing grouping on server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Benefits of grouping on server—an example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Using SQL Expressions for groups, sorts, and totals . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Using SQL Expressions for Case Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Inserting summary and running total fields where possible . . . . . . . . 154

Chapter 9 Record Selection 155

Selecting records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

Using the Select Expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Using formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Interaction of the Select Expert and the Formula Editor . . . . . . . . . . 159

Using formula templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Record selection formula templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Pushing down record selection to the database server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Troubleshooting record selection formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Correcting selections that do not generate data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Chapter 10 Sorting, Grouping, and Totaling 167

Sorting data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Understanding sort options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Sorting single and multiple fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Grouping data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Creating custom groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Sorting groups conditionally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Sorting records within groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Group selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Grouping data in intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Grouping by the first letter of a company name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

Grouping data hierarchically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Editing groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

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Summarizing grouped data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Ordering groups by summarized values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Selecting top or bottom N groups or percentages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Selecting top or bottom groups or percentages conditionally . . . . . . . 193

Subtotaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Subtotaling data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Extending prices and subtotaling the extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Percentages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

Calculating a percentage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

Group headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Creating group headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Suppressing group headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Drilling-down on group headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Chapter 11 Running Totals 203

Understanding running totals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

How running totals work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .204

Creating running totals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Creating running totals in a list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .205

Creating running totals for a group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Creating conditional running totals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Creating running totals in a one-to-many linking relationship . . . . . . . 209

Creating running totals using a formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Chapter 12 Multiple Section Reports 213

About sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .214

Working with sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Inserting a section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Deleting a section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Moving a section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Merging two related sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Splitting and resizing sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Splitting a section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Resizing a section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

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Using multiple sections in reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

Keeping variable length objects from overwriting each other . . . . . . 219

Eliminating blank lines when fields are empty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Adding blank lines conditionally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Form letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Working with text objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Creating a form letter using a text object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Printing conditional messages in form letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Chapter 13 Formatting 231

Formatting concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Using a template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Applying a template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Removing an applied template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

Reapplying the last template selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Using Template Field Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Using the Report Design Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Design solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Section characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

Making an object underlay a following section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Pre-printed forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

Multiple columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Hiding report sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Hiding report objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

Placing text-based objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

Placing multi-line, text-based objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

Importing text-based objects from a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Spacing between text-based objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Overflow Field Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Selecting multiple objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Free-form placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Vertical placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

Inserting character and line spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

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Setting fractional font sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

TrueType fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Page margins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

Default printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

Printer drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Formatting properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Working with absolute formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Adding borders, color, and shading to a field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .260

Making a report, section, area, or object read-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Locking an object’s size and position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Changing your default field formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Adding and editing lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

Adding and editing boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .264

Adding shapes to a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Using conventional accounting formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

Repeating report objects on horizontal pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Using white space between rows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268

Working with conditional formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Conditional on or off properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

Conditional attribute properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

Changing fonts conditionally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Changing X position conditionally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Creating footers after the first page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

Using the Highlighting Expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Undo/Redo activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

Using the Format Painter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

Chapter 14 Charting 281

Charting concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Charting overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Chart layouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Chart types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .283

Where to place a chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

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Drill-down with charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

Drill-down with legends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

Creating charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

Charting on details or formula fields (Advanced layout) . . . . . . . . . . 287

Charting on summary or subtotal fields (Group layout) . . . . . . . . . . 289

Charting on Cross-Tab summaries (Cross-Tab layout) . . . . . . . . . . 290

Charting on an OLAP cube (OLAP layout) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Working with charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Editing charts using the Chart Expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Editing charts using the Chart Options menu items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Editing charts using other menu items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294

Using the zooming features with bar and line charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Auto-arranging charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Formatting charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

Using the underlay feature with charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Chapter 15 Mapping 299

Mapping concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Mapping overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Map layouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Map types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Where to place a map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Drill-down with maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Creating maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Mapping on details fields (Advanced layout) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Mapping on group fields (Group layout) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Mapping on Cross-Tab summaries (Cross-Tab layout) . . . . . . . . . . . 308

Mapping on an OLAP cube (OLAP layout) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

Working with maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

Editing maps using the Map Expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Changing the map title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Changing the map type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Changing map layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

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Resolving data mismatches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

Changing the geographic map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

Zooming in and out on a map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

Panning a map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Centering a map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Hiding and showing the Map Navigator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Formatting Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

Using the underlay feature with maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .316

Chapter 16 OLE 317

OLE overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

OLE terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

Types of OLE objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .319

General OLE considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

Inserting OLE objects into reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

How OLE objects are represented in a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

Editing OLE objects in reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .321

In-place editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .321

Dynamic OLE menu commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

OLE and the Insert Picture command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

Working with static OLE objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

Working with embedded vs. linked objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

Embedded objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

Linked objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

Chapter 17 Cross-Tab Objects 329

What is a Cross-Tab object? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330

Cross-Tab example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Report of order data—no sorting/grouping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Report of order data—grouped by region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

Report of order data—grouped by product . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

Report of order data—grouped by region and product . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Order data in a Cross-Tab object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

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Creating a Cross-Tab report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

Working with Cross-Tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

Showing values as percentages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

Abbreviating large summarized fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

Customizing row/column labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

Using running totals in Cross-Tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

Printing Cross-Tabs that span multiple pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Formatting Cross-Tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346

Changing width, height, and alignment of Cross-Tab cells . . . . . . . . 346

Formatting background color of entire rows/columns . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

Formatting fields individually . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

Formatting several fields at one time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

Suppressing Cross-Tab data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348

Displaying summarized fields horizontally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

Chapter 18 Building Queries 351

Connecting to a universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352

Defining the data selection for a query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352

Quick reference to objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

Editing an existing query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354

Viewing the SQL behind a query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

Query filters and prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

Creating query filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

Building prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

Combining query filters and prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

Creating advanced query filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

Naming advanced filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Combining advanced query filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

Using And or Or to combine query filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

Editing and removing query filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

Quick reference to query filter operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364

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Chapter 19 Creating and Updating OLAP Reports 367

OLAP reporting with Crystal Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368

OLAP grid objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368

Creating an OLAP report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Specifying the data source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .369

Defining the structure of the grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370

Setting sliced dimensions and specifying the number of grids . . . . . . 371

Applying a predefined style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

Inserting a chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

Updating an OLAP report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

Formatting data in an OLAP grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .375

Changing the background color of a dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .376

Creating an alias for a dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Formatting grid lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Labelling dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Changing the view of OLAP data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

Sorting and filtering OLAP grid data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

Sorting data in an OLAP grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

Filtering data in an OLAP grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382

Adding calculations to OLAP grids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382

Chapter 20 Printing, Exporting, and Viewing Reports 383

Distributing reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

Printing a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

Faxing a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

Exporting a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385

Working with Web folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394

Working with Enterprise folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

Viewing reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

What are Report Parts? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

What is navigation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .398

The Report Part Drilldown option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

The Another Report Object option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

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Hyperlinks displayed in the viewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408

Using smart tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409

Chapter 21 Report Alerts 411

About Report Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

Working with Report Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

Creating Report Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

Editing Report Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414

Deleting Report Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415

Viewing Report Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415

Referring to Report Alerts in formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416

Chapter 22 Using Formulas 417

Formulas overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418

Typical uses for formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418

Formula components and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

Formula components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

Formula syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420

User Function Libraries in formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

Specifying formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

Working with the Formula Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423

Working with the Formula Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

Creating and modifying formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

Creating a formula and inserting it into a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

Creating a formula in the Formula Expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

Editing formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

Searching and replacing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

Copying formulas from online help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

Copying formulas from one report to another . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

Deleting formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

Removing the working formula from your report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

Deleting the formula specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

Debugging formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

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Debugging evaluation time errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432

Debugging tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432

Chapter 23 Parameter Fields and Prompts 437

Parameter and prompt overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

Parameter field considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

Prompt considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439

Understanding dynamic prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440

Understanding lists of values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442

List-of-values types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

Determining which list-of-values type to use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445

Lists of values and prompt groups contrasted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446

Creating a parameter with a static prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446

Creating a parameter with a dynamic prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

Creating a parameter with a cascading list of values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

Working with lists of values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453

Sharing common lists of values within a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453

Using separate value and description fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455

Using command objects as list-of-values data sources . . . . . . . . . . . 455

Null handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456

Best practices for prompting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456

Unmanaged reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456

Managed reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

Converting unmanaged reports to managed reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458

Deploying managed reports with dynamic prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458

Deleting parameter fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459

Responding to parameter field prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

Previewing .a report for the first time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

Refreshing report data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

Advanced parameter features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461

Creating a parameter with multiple prompting values . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462

Applying conditional formatting using parameter fields . . . . . . . . . . . . 462

Creating a report title using parameter fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463

16 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Contents

Specifying single or ranges of values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464

Incorporating a parameter into a formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465

Defining sort order using parameter fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466

Defining entry type and format using the Edit Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467

Chapter 24 Subreports 469

What are subreports? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470

Unlinked vs. linked subreports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470

How subreport linking works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

Database links vs. subreports in one-to-many situations . . . . . . . . . . 472

Inserting subreports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

Previewing subreports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474

Saving a subreport as a primary report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474

Updating subreports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475

Linking a subreport to the data in the primary report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475

Linking a subreport to the main report without modifying the selection

formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477

Combining unrelated reports by using subreports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478

Combining two or more unrelated reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478

Using subreports with unlinkable data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

Linking to/from a formula field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

Linking unindexed tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480

Creating an on-demand subreport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481

Adding captions to on-demand subreports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481

Showing different views of the same data in a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482

Chapter 25 Understanding Databases 483

Databases overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

Relational database basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

Locating files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486

Indexed tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487

Linking tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 17

Contents

Link from and link to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490

Link relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490

Performance considerations in one-to-many links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491

Data file considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .493

SQL database considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495

Performance considerations for all reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496

The Database Expert Links tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .498

Linking indexed tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498

Link processing order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .499

Linking options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500

Using SQL and SQL databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510

What is SQL? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510

SQL DBMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512

How does Crystal Reports use SQL? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514

The SQL language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514

Server-side processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516

How server-side grouping affects the SQL query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Mapping database fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519

About the Map Fields dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .519

Remapping processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520

Remapping altered database fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522

Saved Data Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523

How Report Indexing works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523

Considerations for using Saved Data Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524

Indexing the right field(s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .524

Unicode support in Crystal Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525

For additional information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525

Appendix A Report Processing Model 527

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528

What is a “pass”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528

Pre-pass 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .528

Pass 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528

18 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Contents

Pre-pass 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

Pass 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

Pass 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530

Multi-pass reporting flow chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530

Appendix B Crystal Reports Error Messages 531

Appendix C Creating Accessible Reports 535

About accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536

Benefits of accessible reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536

About the accessibility guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537

Accessibility and Business Objects products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538

Improving report accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539

Placing objects in reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539

Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544

Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546

Parameter fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547

Designing for flexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547

Accessibility and conditional formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

Accessibility and suppressing sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

Accessibility and subreports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550

Improving data table accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551

Text objects and data table values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551

Other data table design considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

Accessibility and BusinessObjects Enterprise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556

Setting accessible preferences for BusinessObjects Enterprise . . . . 557

Accessibility and customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559

Appendix D Business Objects Information Resources 561

Documentation and information services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562

Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562

What’s in the documentation set? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 19

Contents

Where is the documentation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562

Send us your feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

Customer support, consulting and training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

How can we support you? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

Looking for the best deployment solution for your company? . . . . . . . 564

Looking for training options? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564

Useful addresses at a glance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564

Index 565

20 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Introduction to Crystal Reports 11

chapter

Introduction to Crystal Reports 11

About Crystal Reports

Crystal Reports is designed to work with your database to help you analyze and interpret important information. Crystal Reports makes it easy to create simple reports, and, it also has the comprehensive tools you need to produce complex or specialized reports.

Create any report you can imagine

Crystal Reports is designed to produce the report you want from virtually any data source. Built-in report experts guide you step by step through building reports and completing common reporting tasks. Formulas, cross-tabs, subreports, and conditional formatting help make sense of data and uncover important relationships that might otherwise be hidden. Geographic maps and graphs communicate information visually when words and numbers are simply not enough.

Extend reporting to the Web

The flexibility of Crystal Reports doesn’t end with creating reports — your reports can be published in a variety of formats including Microsoft Word and Excel, E-mail and even over the Web. Advanced Web reporting lets other members of your workgroup view and update shared reports inside their web browser.

Incorporate reports into applications

Application and web developers can save time and meet their users needs by integrating the report processing power of Crystal Reports into their database applications. Support for most popular development languages makes it easy to add reporting to any application.

Whether it’s the web master in IT, the promotion manager in marketing, the database administrator in finance or the CEO, Crystal Reports is a powerful tool designed to help everyone analyze and interpret the information that’s important to them.

22 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

About this guide

This guide includes procedures for typical reporting tasks such as placing fields, formatting reports, and sorting records. It also contains information on more specific areas of interest such as advanced formula creation and accessing different types of data. Use this guide as a reference for your basic reporting needs as well as an introduction to new concepts in report creation.

Online help

Crystal Reports online help includes all topics within the user’s guide. It also provides additional reference material ranging from specific information on

the function of a button to general information on how to create a report formula based on a sample business scenario.

Locate information quickly

Access online help from the Crystal Reports help menu.

Use the Contents tab to view all major sections in the online help and drill down to specific headings within each section, the Index tab to view topics in alphabetical order, and the Search tab to enter a keyword to view all the sections that relate to the keyword.

Introduction to Crystal Reports 11

About this guide

Sample Reports

Many topics in the Crystal Reports online help include a list of related sample reports. Use these reports to illustrate concepts the topic describes. The sample reports can be adapted to your own needs.

Sample reports are located in the Crystal Reports directory under

\Samples\En\Reports.

Business Objects information resources

For more information and assistance, see Appendix D: Business Objects

Information Resources. This appendix describes the Business Objects

documentation, customer support, training, and consulting services, with links to online resources.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 23

Introduction to Crystal Reports 11

About this guide

24 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

What’s New in Crystal Reports 11

chapter

What’s New in Crystal Reports 11

Introduction

This section provides a high-level overview of the components, features, and benefits that are provided by the latest release of Crystal Reports.

The major themes for Crystal Reports 11 include:

• “Powerful report authoring” on page 26.

• “Improved usability” on page 27.

• “Expanded application-development capabilities” on page 28.

• “Integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise 11” on page 32.

You can find new features within all of the major themes. Significant enhancements have also been added to the existing feature set.

Powerful report authoring

Dynamic and cascading prompts

Dynamic and cascading prompts are now available in Crystal Reports. This new feature allows you to populate prompt values from values in a database. Prompts can be arranged in a cascade, where one value in the prompt constrains values in subsequent pick lists. Report designers no longer need to maintain static prompt lists in individual reports. A single prompt definition can be stored in the repository and shared among multiple reports, improving both runtime scalability and design-time productivity.

New RTF export format

A new RTF Export format is available. This new format is optimized for ease of editing the files that it generates. This feature complements the existing RTF export that is optimized for accuracy and forms processing. The result is that you can now choose from two different RTF export formats, depending on whether you require accuracy or the ability to edit.

Dynamic graphic location

You can now place pictures and graphics in a report through a link stored in a database, so that it is no longer necessary to store images within the database. This new feature supports the common practice of storing images on a web server and storing references to those images in a database.

26 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

What’s New in Crystal Reports 11

Improved usability

Parameterized sorting

Group sort order and top or bottom N reports can now have their sort values driven by a formula. This new feature means that you can now use parameters to control sort order and the N value of a top or bottom N report. The result is a single report that is more flexible and can meet the needs of more users, reducing the total number of reports for you to create and support.

Hierarchical grouping improvements

Enhanced hierarchical grouping provides increased layout control so that groups are now nested in a hierarchy, and you now have more fine-grained control over hierarchy indenting. You can now indent specific objects in a section according to their hierarchy level, instead of automatically indenting all objects in the hierarchy.

Save export configuration options

For many export formats, you can now save report export-configuration information with the report itself. This feature means that the report designer can preset the appropriate export options, and end users will use those options when exporting through the report viewers. This process results in more accurate export output with less end-user training.

Improved usability

HTML preview

Crystal Reports now offers a new HTML preview that lets you see how your reports will look when published to the web. This feature is found in the familiar Crystal Reports design environment as an additional view tab. When you use this feature, you can save time by not having to repeat the iterative task of publishing your reports to the web as you design them.

Updated Repository Explorer

The new Repository Explorer makes it easier to navigate within the BusinessObjects Enterprise system. You are better able to share reporting components with other users through the repository.

Workbench

The Workbench lets you keep projects organized and allows you to group reports in folders according to your preference.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 27

What’s New in Crystal Reports 11

Expanded application-development capabilities

Drag-and-drop charts and cross-tabs

New drag-and-drop charts and cross-tabs introduce intelligent charting and cross-tab design by letting Crystal Reports automatically create a chart or cross-tab that is based on the data in your report. Chart and cross-tab design is now faster and easier.

Update patch installation

This new feature is similar to Windows Update in that it allows you to stay current with the latest updates to Crystal Reports.

Enhanced report viewer

The resizable group tree improves report viewing for long group names, and the toolbar has been updated to be more consistent across viewers.

Expanded application-development capabilities

General description

Control over report formats

Developers now have the same fine-grained control over the report format as they do within the Crystal Reports designer.

Server-side printing and subreport configuration

New and improved cross-platform application programming interfaces include server-side printing, as well as the ability to configure subreports as if they were full Crystal reports.

Java User Function Libraries

Custom Java User Function Libraries let Java developers incorporate their own code within Crystal Reports.

Java Server Faces

User-Interface development is simplified with support for Java Server Faces (JSF) through a new JSF viewer Software Developer Kit.

Developer documentation

This version offers enhanced developer documentation that provides coverage for the most common reporting use cases.

28 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Report Application Server (RAS)

Report Application Server 11 contains many new features. Notable among these is dynamic prompting and cascading lists of values, an editable RTF export format, single-sign on support, complete programmatic control for subreports, and dynamic image locations. Backward compatibility continues to be a critical feature—no APIs or major features were removed from this release when compared with version 10.

New APIs

• Full programmatic control for exporting has been added.

• New cross-platform printing support from RAS SDK has been added.

• Full programmatic control to retrieve, modify, and create subreport

objects—to the same level of detail as the main report—has been added.

• Images in BMP, JPG or PNG format can be added programmatically to

any section of the report.

• Single Sign-On is supported for major databases with managed reports.

• New extensible URL Reporting components allow easy report viewing

over the web with the ActiveX, Java Plug-in, or DHTML viewers.

What’s New in Crystal Reports 11

Expanded application-development capabilities

Enhanced deployment options

• There is now one merge module that works for all RAS, .NET, and COM

deployment scenarios to IIS Web Application Servers.

• Enhanced configurable deployment options allow full control over

deployed database and exporting DLLs. As well, a configurable option for whether the has been added.

Improved report viewers

crystalreportviewers11 IIS virtual directory is created

• The ActiveX, .NET Winform and Webform, and DHTML viewers have all

been enhanced to use the dynamic prompting functionality, and they all have the ability to export to the editable RTF format.

• See the Viewer Java SDK Guide for a complete list of enhancements to

the report viewers.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 29

What’s New in Crystal Reports 11

Expanded application-development capabilities

Report Designer Component (RDC)

The new features in version 11 of the RDC are primarily focused on format compatibility with reports created in Crystal Reports 11. This focus includes maintaining compatibility with applications created in previous versions of the RDC.

New APIs

• You can now retrieve the fully qualified database table name for a Table

item in a report.

Enhanced deployment options

• The RDC merge modules are now automatically installed to Program

Files\Common Files\Merge Modules

• The merge modules have been enhanced to support recent versions of

InstallShield.

• Enhanced configurable deployment options allow full control over

deployed database and exporting DLLs.

Improved ActiveX viewer

• The new exporting dialog box supports the editable RTF format.

• Page drawing performance has been dramatically improved in many

scenarios through caching of the rendered output.

• The visual quality of output and printing has been improved to match the

Crystal Reports preview tab.

• Objects displayed in the ActiveX viewer can be highlighted individually or

in groups and then copied and pasted to applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook.

• Page navigation now supports the page-up and page-down keys.

• Printing now supports multiple page ranges from the print dialog box.

Crystal Reports .NET

Crystal Reports .NET contains many new features. Notable among these is dynamic prompting and cascading lists of values, an editable RTF export format, single-sign on support, and dynamic image locations. Backward compatibility continues to be a critical feature—no APIs or major features were removed from this release when compared with version 10.

30 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

What’s New in Crystal Reports 11

Expanded application-development capabilities

New APIs

• Full programmatic control for exporting has been added.

• For managed reports and unmanaged reports that run in-process RAS,

Single Sign-On is supported for major databases.

• Significant speed improvements have been made when connecting

Crystal Reports .NET view-only applications to BusinessObjects Enterprise.

Enhanced deployment options

• There is now one merge module that works for all Crystal Reports .NET

deployment scenarios.

• Enhanced configurable deployment options allow full control over

deployed database and exporting DLLs. As well, a configurable option for whether the has been added.

Improved Winform viewer

crystalreportviewers11 IIS virtual directory is created

• The new exporting dialog box supports the editable RTF format.

• The new dynamic prompts are supported at run time.

• Tooltips can be disabled.

• An error-event handler has been added.

• The viewer now allows developer-written dynamic-resource localization

to unsupported languages.

Improved Webform viewer

• The new exporting dialog box supports the editable RTF format.

• The new dynamic prompts are supported at run time.

• Tooltips can be disabled.

• The viewer now respects the Culture attribute of the ASP.NET Page

Directive.

• The viewer now allows developer-written dynamic-resource localization

to unsupported languages.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 31

What’s New in Crystal Reports 11

Integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise 11

Integration between the Crystal Reports Designer and BusinessObjects Enterprise has been substantially enhanced in the following ways:

• The Repository Explorer has been enhanced to allow for easier logon

and easier browsing of Enterprise objects and repository items.

• The Repository Explorer can open the BusinessObjects Enterprise

Central Management Console (CMC).

• The Dependency Checker allows you to confirm that all repository

objects in your report are valid.

• The Workbench allows you to publish a group of reports individually or

combined into a single object package.

Single Sign-On

Single Sign-On is now available so that a Crystal report can be integrated into an existing security infrastructure.

URL reporting

URL-based report integration has been re-implemented as ASP, ASPX, and JSP pages that are fully backward compatible with the old technology. This easy and popular method of report integration will continue to be supported on standard application-server platforms.

viewrpt.cwr

Business Objects universes

Crystal reports based on Business Objects Universes (the semantic layer for Business Objects query-and-analysis tools such as Web Intelligence) can now support Universe run-time security and union queries. These enhancements allow for most overloads defined in the Universe to be supported when you report off that Universe in Crystal Reports.

Contextual report linking

Contextual report linking enables you to invoke Business Objects and Web Intelligence documents from Crystal Reports and vice versa. This feature allows report designers to specify associations for documents residing in either a Crystal Reports environment (unmanaged) or a BusinessObjects Enterprise environment (managed). Once these associations are created, users follow the resulting navigational paths embedded in the linked documents.

32 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Installing Crystal Reports 11

chapter

Installing Crystal Reports 11

The Crystal Reports Installation Wizard works with Microsoft Windows Installer to guide you through the installation process. The Installation Wizard automatically recognizes your computer’s operating system and updates files as required.

This chapter provides step-by-step instructions for installing Crystal Reports and shows how to customize your installation. The main topics are:

• “Installation requirements” on page 34

• “Installing Crystal Reports on a local machine” on page 35

• “Creating an installation point and installing from a network server” on

page 36

• “Customizing your installation” on page 38

• “Running a silent installation” on page 41

• “Upgrading Crystal Reports components” on page 43

As one of the final steps in the installation process, you’ll be asked if you want to register the product. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete this process.

Installation requirements

Minimum installation requirements

Operating Systems Windows 2000

Windows XP Professional Windows 2003 Server

Computer/Processor 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU

Memory At least 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM. 256 MB

recommended. 4 gigabytes (GB) maximum

Disk space 320 Megabytes

Drive CD-ROM or DVD drive

Note:

• The .NET components require the .NET 1.0 or .NET 1.1 runtime.

• The Java components require a J2EE 1.3.x or J2EE 1.4.x compatible

runtime.

34 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Installing Crystal Reports on a local machine

If you are installing Crystal Reports on a computer running any of the supported operating systems (see Minimum installation requirements above), you must have Administrator privileges. The installation process creates registry entries and may update some system files that require Administrator rights.

Close all currently running programs and stop as many services as possible when installing Crystal Reports.

If you want to limit the features you install, see “Customizing your installation” on page 38.

To install on a local machine



1. Unless Autoplay is enabled for your CD-ROM drive, run Setup.exe from

the win32 directory of your product distribution.

Note: Depending on the configuration of your current system, you may

receive a dialog box informing you to update existing files. If this happens, click Yes and restart your machine. The Installation Wizard updates the required files.

2. Read and accept the License Agreement to proceed with the installation.

3. In the User Information dialog box, type your name, organization, and the

product activation keycode.

4. Click Next.

The Select Installation Type dialog box appears.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 35

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Creating an installation point and installing from a network server

5. Choose the type of installation that you want to perform:

• Typical installs the most common application features.

• Custom enables you to choose the features that you want installed,

to specify where they will be installed, and to check the disk space required by each feature. For details, see “Customizing your

installation” on page 38.

6. Click Browse if you want to install Crystal Reports or its common files to

a directory different from the default location.

The default location for Crystal Reports is

Files\Business Objects\

The default location for the Crystal Reports common files is C:\Program

Files\Common Files\Business Objects\3.0\

Note: These location fields may be unavailable if you have

BusinessObjects Enterprise installed on the same machine.

7. Click Next.

The Start Installation dialog box appears.

Note: If you install Crystal Reports on a machine with an Internet

connection, you can choose to disable the automatic Web Update Service feature. This features lets you check for updates and service packs each time you open Crystal Reports; if you disable it, you cannot activate it later.

8. Click Next to begin copying files to your local drive.

C:\Program

Creating an installation point and installing from a network server

Installing Crystal Reports from a central network location involves two steps:

1. Make a copy of your Crystal Reports product distribution on a server

machine on the network (this copy becomes your installation point). See

“Creating an installation point for Crystal Reports” on page 37.

2. Access the server machine from a workstation, and run Setup.exe to

install Crystal Reports on the workstation. See “Installing Crystal Reports

from a network” on page 37.

36 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Creating an installation point and installing from a network server

Creating an installation point for Crystal Reports

This procedure must be performed by a network administrator who has write access and network privileges. When this procedure is complete, end users will be able to access Setup.exe from the network to install Crystal Reports onto their local machines.

Note: If users do not have the Microsoft Windows Installer configured on

their machines, the setup process detects the workstation’s operating system and installs the appropriate Microsoft Windows Installer package.

To create an installation point



1. Create a folder on your network, and share this folder for the users who

need to run the Setup.exe.

2. Copy the entire contents of your Crystal Reports product distribution to the

folder that you created in step 1.

3. Assign rights to the users who need to install Crystal Reports from this folder.

Note: Restricting access to this folder lets you stay within your license limit.

Installing Crystal Reports from a network

If your network administrator has copied Crystal Reports to the network, make sure you have read privileges to that network before beginning this process.

If you are installing Crystal Reports on a computer running any of the supported operating systems (see “Minimum installation requirements” on page 34), you must have Administrator privileges on the computer. The installation process creates registry entries and may update some system files that require Administrator rights.

Close all currently running programs and stop as many services as possible when installing Crystal Reports.

To install Crystal Reports from a network



1. Access the folder on the network that contains the Crystal Reports

installation files.

2. Double-click Setup.exe.

Note: Depending on the configuration of your current system, you may

receive a dialog box informing you to update existing files. Click Yes and restart your machine. The Installation Wizard updates the required files.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 37

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Customizing your installation

3. Read and accept the License Agreement to proceed with the installation.

4. In the User Information dialog box, type your name, organization, and the

product activation keycode.

Tip: You may need to contact your Administrator for the product

activation keycode.

5. Click Next.

The Select Installation Type dialog box appears.

6. Choose the type of installation that you want to perform:

• Typical installs the most common application features.

• Custom enables you to choose the features that you want installed,

to specify where they will be installed, and to check the disk space required by each feature. For details, see “Customizing your

installation” on page 38.

7. Click Browse if you want to install Crystal Reports or its common files to

a directory different from the default location.

The default location for Crystal Reports is

Files\Business Objects\

The default location for the Crystal Reports common files is C:\Program

Files\Common Files\Business Objects\3.0\

8. Click Next.

The Start Install dialog box appears.

Note: If you install Crystal Reports on a machine with an Internet

9. Click Next to begin copying files to your local drive.

C:\Program

Customizing your installation

Selecting the Custom installation option invokes the Select Features dialog box, which allows you to install specific features, to change the default location of various features, and to check the amount of disk space required by each feature.

38 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Customizing your installation

The icons in the feature tree indicate whether the feature and its subfeatures will be installed or not:

• A white icon means that the feature and all its subfeatures will be

installed.

• A shaded icon means that the feature and some of its subfeatures will be

installed.

• A yellow 1 means that the feature will be installed when required

(installed on demand).

• A red X means that the feature or subfeature is either unavailable or will

not be installed.

Crystal Reports uses an “install on-demand” technology for some of its features. As a result, the very first time a particular feature is used after being installed, there may be an extra wait for the “install on-demand” to complete. This behavior will affect new installations only once and will not occur when features are restarted.

To select the configuration and location of a feature or subfeature, click its icon.

Note: Each feature or subfeature can have its own configuration and location.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 39

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Customizing your installation

Use the following table to determine your installation options for each feature or subfeature:

Type of feature installation

Will be installed on local hard drive

Entire feature will be installed on local hard drive

Will be installed to run from product distribution/network

Entire feature will be installed to run from product distribution/network

Feature will be installed when required

Entire feature will be unavailable

Description of what is installed

• Installs the feature on the local hard drive.

• Uses the Typical install settings to install

some of the feature’s subfeatures to the local hard drive.

• Installs the feature and all of its

subfeatures on the local hard drive.

• Runs the feature and its Typical

subfeatures off the product distribution/ network.

Note: Some subfeatures are not set up to run

from the product distribution/network. These subfeatures will be installed on your local hard drive.

• Runs the feature and all of its subfeatures

off the product distribution/network.

Note: Some subfeatures are not set up to run

from the product distribution/network. These subfeatures will be installed on your local hard drive.

• Installs the feature or subfeature from the

product distribution/network when first used.

• Neither the feature nor its subfeatures are

installed.

Note: Subfeatures are listed below each feature. A subfeature can have a

different type of installation than its parent feature.

40 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Running a silent installation

A silent installation is one that you run from the command line to automatically install Crystal Reports on any machine in your system, without the installation program prompting for information during the installation. To install silently, you run an msiexec command from the command line. The command must include a series of parameters that provide information for installation settings and directory paths.

The silent Crystal Reports installation is particularly useful when you need to perform multiple installations and do not want to interrupt people who are working on machines in your system. You can also use the silent installation command in your own scripts. For example, if your organization uses scripts to install software on machines, you can add the silent Crystal Reports installation command to your scripts.

Note:

• The silent installation is not available from the Crystal Reports Setup

program and is intended only for experienced administrators of Crystal Reports.

• When you perform a silent installation, you accept the Crystal Reports

end-user license agreement by default. You can find a copy of the license agreement (

• Silent installations are intended for new installations; do not use them for

upgrades.

The silent installation command consists of the command by the location of the installation executable file, and a number of parameters that provide information about the installation. The following example installs Crystal Reports on

Msiexec /i "\\mymachine\Business Objects\Crystal

Reports11\scr.msi" REBOOT=ReallySuppress /qn+ PIDKEY=A1234-ABCD123-12345A6-AB12 INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Crystal Reports 11" COMMONVERDIR="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Business Objects\3.0"

The example uses the most common parameters. You can choose any number of valid parameters, but it is good practice to keep the silent installation as simple as possible.

license.pdf) in the Docs folder of your product distribution.

mymachine:

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Running a silent installation

msiexec, followed

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 41

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Running a silent installation

The following table lists the most common parameters used in a silent installation. To use a parameter, place it on the command line after the

msiexec command and the path for the installation files.

Note: Parameters that are not listed in this table may be available, but they

have not been tested. Untested parameters are not supported.

Installation parameter Description

INSTALLDIR="filepath" Specifies the machine and directory

where you want to install Crystal Reports. Replace filepath with the full path for the installation directory. For example, "C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Crystal Reports 11".

COMMONVERDIR="filepath" Specifies the machine and directory

where you want to store the common files directory created during the installation. Replace filepath with the full path for the common files directory. For example, "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Business Objects\3.0".

PIDKEY=00000-00000000000000-0000

REBOOT=ReallySuppress Prevents Crystal Reports from

/qn+ Performs the installation silently, but

/qn Performs the installation silently, without

ADDLOCAL Specifies a list of features, delimited by

Specifies your product activation keycode.

prompting the user to reboot the machine.

prompts the user when the installation is complete.

prompting the user.

commas, that you want to install. For example, ADDLOCAL=ALL

Note: When using any of the EXCLUDE

parameters in this table, you must also use ADDLOCAL.

For example, ADDLOCAL=ALL EXCLUDERDCFILES=1

42 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Upgrading Crystal Reports components

Installation parameter Description

EXCLUDEDOTNETFILES Specifies whether the .NET developer

components should be installed. For example,

EXCLUDEDOTNETFILES=1 The default value is 0, which indicates

that the .NET developer components should be installed. The value 1 indicates these components should not be installed.

EXCLUDEJAVAFILES Specifies whether the Java developer

components should be installed. For example, EXCLUDEJAVAFILES=1 The default value is 0, which indicates

that the Java developer components should be installed. The value 1 indicates these components should not be installed.

EXCLUDERDCFILES Specifies whether the RDC developer

components should be installed. For example, EXCLUDERDCFILES=1 The default value is 0, which indicates

that the RDC developer components should be installed. The value 1 indicates these components should not be installed.

Note: You can use the silent installation to add only features that you have

purchased licences for (controlled by your license key). If you add a feature that you do not have a license for, that feature is ignored by the silent installer.

Upgrading Crystal Reports components

If you have purchased an upgrade product activation keycode, you will find that the installation program does not remove your previous version of Crystal Reports. In general, upgrading Crystal Reports components provides you with a side-by-side installation (that is, an installation in which you can run either your old or new version of Crystal Reports).

Note: Crystal Reports 11 side-by-side installation is supported when

upgrading from Crystal Reports 10, Crystal Reports 9, or Crystal Reports 8.5.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 43

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Upgrading Crystal Reports components

This side-by-side behavior applies to Crystal Reports and the various Software Development Kits (SDKs). Crystal Reports 11 for Visual Studio .NET can be used in side-by-side mode at runtime (that is, applications written using Crystal Reports 10 for Visual Studio .NET will continue to run with Crystal Reports 10 for Visual Studio .NET assemblies). However, Visual Studio integration is not side by side; only one version of Crystal Reports can be integrated into the Visual Studio .NET IDE at any given time. The same thing applies to the Report Designer Component (RDC): the RDC can be used in side-by-side mode at runtime, but IDE integration is not side by side.

Note:

• When you upgrade Crystal Reports 9 components, the BusinessObjects

Enterprise Repository presents a special case. You must install the BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository from the Crystal Enterprise Standard product distribution (see the Crystal Enterprise 11 Installation Guide for information). You must then move repository content that you added in Crystal Reports 9 to the new repository. See the chapter called “Migrating the Crystal Repository” in the Business Views Administrator’s Guide for information about how to do this.

• For further information that may pertain to your reporting environment,

consult the Release Notes included with your product distribution

release.htm).

(

44 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Quick Start

chapter

Quick Start

Learning how to use Crystal Reports

You can teach yourself how to use Crystal Reports by choosing from the methods available in this chapter:

• You can study the sample reports and sample database included with

Crystal Reports.

• You can use the detailed descriptions and instructions in the “Quick start

for new users” on page 48.

• You can use the summaries and topic cross-references in the “Quick start

for advanced users” on page 68—especially useful if you’re already

familiar with reporting concepts.

Each method is a helpful way to learn and understand Crystal Reports and, although any one might be enough to get you up and running, you can always come back to this chapter and consult the other methods as you need them.

Sample data - Xtreme.mdb

Crystal Reports comes with Xtreme.mdb, a sample database you can use when learning the program. Xtreme.mdb is a Microsoft Access database and all of the necessary drivers are included. You should be able to open the database directly and begin designing reports. Virtually all of the examples in this manual are based on Xtreme.mdb data.

Xtreme.mdb is a database that contains data for Xtreme Mountain Bikes, a fictitious manufacturer of mountain bikes and accessories.

Note: The sample data has been designed to illustrate various reporting

concepts in a training environment, not to teach database design. While there are alternative ways of designing a database, this design was selected to keep the tutorials and examples focused on reporting, not on data manipulation.

Report Creation Wizards

The tutorials in this chapter show you how to build a report from scratch. As a complement or an alternative, however, you may want to use the Report Creation Wizards available on the Start Page. There are four Report Creation Wizards:

• Standard

• Cross-Tab

• Mailing Label

• OLAP

46 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Standard

Cross-Tab

Quick Start

Report Creation Wizards

Each wizard guides you through the creation of a report by providing a series of screens. Many of the wizards have screens unique to a specific type of report. For example, the Mailing Labels Report Creation Wizard has a screen that allows you to specify the type of mailing label you want to use.

Note: After you’ve clicked the Finish button in a Report Creation Wizard, you

can click the Stop button on the Navigation Tools toolbar if you don’t want the program to gather all the data from your data source. This is useful if you want to make adjustments to the report layout that the wizard created.

The Standard Report Creation Wizard is the most generic of the wizards. It guides you through choosing a data source and linking database tables. It also helps you add fields and specify the grouping, summarization (totals), and sorting criteria you want to use. Finally, the Standard Report Creation Wizard leads you through chart creation and record selection.

The Templates screen contains predefined layouts for you to apply to your report to give it more impact.

The Cross-Tab Report Creation Wizard guides you through the creation of a report in which your data is displayed as a cross-tab object. Two special screens (Cross-Tab and Grid Style) help you create and format the cross-tab itself.

Mailing Label

The Mailing Labels Report Creation Wizard lets you create a report that is formatted to print on any size mailing label. You can use the Label screen to select a commercial label type, or you can define your own layout of rows and columns for any multi-column style report.

OLAP

The OLAP Report Creation Wizard lets you create a report in which your OLAP data is displayed as a grid object. Although similar to the Cross-Tab Report Creation Wizard in several ways, the OLAP Report Creation Wizard appears to be different due to the requirements of working with OLAP data sources. You first specify the location of your OLAP data, and then you choose

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 47

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

the dimensions you want to include in the grid. Next you filter the report data and choose the style of the grid object, which you can also customize. Finally, you can define labels for your grid and insert a chart, if you wish.

This is only a brief overview of the four Report Creation Wizards available in Crystal Reports.

Quick start for new users

The following tutorial has been designed to give you confidence when creating your first report.

In this tutorial, you will get an introduction to the program as you create a Customer List report. The Customer List is one of the most basic business reports and typically has information such as Customer Name, City, Region, and Contact Name.

You begin by learning the basic concepts: selecting a database, placing some fields on the report, and then selecting specific records to be included. You will then learn how to:

• Insert and move database fields.

• Add and format a title.

• Display a report in the Preview tab so you can fine-tune your work.

• Use the Select Expert to ensure the report includes only the data you

need.

• Move objects.

• Group and sort data.

• Insert pictures.

• Print a report.

Before you begin

This tutorial assumes you are familiar with Microsoft Windows and uses conventional terms and procedures common to the Windows environment. If you are not familiar with Windows, please refer to the documentation that came with Microsoft Windows for further explanation.

The default font for all report sections in the program is set to Arial, 10 point. If you have changed the default font, or if your printer does not support this font, the field size, field spacing, and screen shots will look different than those included in this tutorial.

48 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

This tutorial has been designed using Microsoft Windows 2000. Screen shots may vary slightly if you are using a different platform.

If you are not familiar with the Crystal Reports environment, review

“Formatting” on page 231, which describes working with the grid, free-form

placement, using guidelines, and formatting activities.

Creating the report

1. Click the Start Page tab if the Start Page is not already visible in Crystal

Reports.

The New Reports area of the Start Page contains a number of wizards to guide you through the creation of specific types of reports. Since you will be learning reporting concepts here, you can skip the wizards and build your report from scratch. After you have completed this tutorial, you may want to build some reports using the wizards to decide which method of report construction you are most comfortable with.

2. In the New Reports area, click Blank Report.

The Database Expert dialog box appears.

Note: You can create reports based on database files, SQL/ODBC data

sources, Business Views, and a variety of other data sources.

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

Selecting a database to use

The next step in creating a report is to select a database. Select the Xtreme.mdb sample database for this tutorial.

To select a database



1. In the Database Expert dialog box, expand the Create New Connection

folder and then expand the Database Files folder; then search for the Xtreme.mdb sample database.

By default, this file was installed in the

Objects\Crystal Reports 11\Samples\En\Databases

\Program Files\Business

directory.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 49

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

Note:

• You have to use the Open dialog box to find the Xtreme database.

• If you wish to see database and server properties after you have

selected a database, right-click the database node in the Database Expert and select Properties from the shortcut menu.

2. Expand the Tab le s node of the Xtreme.mdb connection to see a list of

tables.

Because you are dealing only with customers in this tutorial, you will select the Customer table.

3. Select Customer and click the > arrow to add it to the Selected Tables list,

and then click OK.

The Design tab of the Report Designer appears.

4. Click Field Explorer on the Standard toolbar.

The Field Explorer dialog box appears.

50 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Report sections

The Design tab is divided into five sections: Report Header (RH), Page Header (PH), Details (D), Report Footer (RF), and Page Footer (PF). If at any time you are unsure of the report section in which you are working, simply look at the shaded area to the left of the report which always displays either the section names or the initials that designate the names. See “Design tab” on page 87.

If the Short Section Names check box is selected in the Design View area of the Options dialog box, then the Report Header, Page Header, Details, Report Footer and Page Footer section names will appear as RH, PH, D, RF and PF respectively. If this check box is not selected, follow these steps:

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

Note: Depending on how it appeared when you last used Crystal

Reports, the Field Explorer dialog box might be docked or in floating mode. For more information about docking explorers, see “Opening and

docking explorers” on page 114.



1. On the File menu, click Options.

2. In the Design View area, select the Short Section Names check box.

3. Click OK to return to the report.

Inserting a field

You’ll use the Field Explorer dialog box to insert database fields when you create a new report.

This dialog box is set to remain on-screen until you close it. All the tables available for use are listed in this box.

You will now start placing objects on the report by inserting the Customer Name field.

To show short section names

The Options dialog box appears with the Layout tab active.

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 51

Quick Start

Quick start for new users



To insert a field

1. Expand the Database Fields node in the Field Explorer dialog box and

expand a table.

2. Highlight a field name by clicking the name once.

When you highlight a field name, you can review a subset of the values for that field as well as the field type and size by right-clicking the field and selecting Browse Data from the shortcut menu.

3. Click the Customer Name field and drag it into the Details section of the

report.

An object frame appears with the Arrow cursor as you drag the field onto the report:

• The object frame represents the object you have just selected for

placement.

• The size of the object frame approximates the size of the data in the

field selected.

4. Move the object frame as far to the left as you can in the Details section.

If you move the field too far to the left, the Arrow cursor turns into a Stop cursor, indicating that you cannot drag the field that far. Keep in mind that you cannot place any objects outside the page margin.

52 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

The Design tab should look similar to this:

Understanding fields

Before going any further, take a look at the field you just placed in the Details section:

• First of all, the object frame indicates that when the report is printed, a

field value will appear where the box is positioned.

• If you haven’t selected the Show Field Names check box on the Layout

tab of the Options dialog box, the object frame contains Xs to indicate that the database field contains a text string. Other data types have different character representations. For example, a currency data type is represented by $55,555.56.

• If your report is not showing field names, the number of Xs in the object

frame is the data width, the maximum number of characters in the field as defined by the database. Whether or not your report shows field names, the width of the object frame is the field width (the amount of space allocated to the field for printing). Initially it is set to the width needed to display the maximum number of characters in the field (using the font selected for the field). You can change this width by resizing the field.

• The size of the characters or Xs indicates the point size selected for the

characters in the field.

• The font and style (Bold, Underline, and so on) used in displaying the

characters or Xs indicate the font and style selected for the characters in the field. Later in this tutorial you will learn how to make changes to these properties.

• The line spacing is adjusted to the point size selected for the characters

in the field.

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 53

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

Adding additional fields

Next, you will insert two additional fields in the report. This time, however, you will use the Ctrl-click combination to add them at the same time.



1. Highlight the City field in the Field Explorer dialog box, press the Ctrl key on

2. Drag the fields to place them.

3. Place the fields to the right of the Customer Name field.

To add additional fields

your keyboard, and then highlight the Country field. Release the Ctrl key.

If you scroll through the field list, you will notice that both fields remain selected.

Note: Using the Ctrl-click combination allows you to select a non-

continuous range of fields. The Shift-click combination can be used to select several fields from the list that are contiguous.

As the cursor is moved over the report, an object frame appears along with the Arrow cursor.

Both fields appear in the Details section of the report in the same order in which they are listed in the Field Explorer dialog box.

Selecting fields

When a field is selected, the object frame appears with a handle (box) on its right, left, top, and bottom edge. These handles indicate that the field is selected, and therefore active. To do anything with a field (change the font, move it, and so on), you first have to select it:

• Position the cursor inside the object frame and click once. The handles

appear, indicating the object is selected.

• Move the cursor away from the object frame and click in an empty part of

the window. The handles disappear.

That’s all it takes to select and deselect objects.

Resizing fields

To resize the field, follow these steps:

1. Click the Customer Name field in the Details section to select it.

2. Press the Ctrl key and click the field heading to select both objects.

3. Move the cursor over the resizing handle on the right edge of the fields

until the cursor turns into a Resizing cursor.

4. Resize the fields to the right until they are approximately two inches in length.

54 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Reviewing your work

Now let’s see how the report looks with three fields placed and positioned.

1. Click Print Preview on the Standard toolbar to activate the Preview tab.

The screen should look similar to this:

Note: The first time you preview a report, you must click Print Preview

on the Standard toolbar to activate the Preview tab. The Preview tab appears to the right of the Design tab. You can then switch between designing and previewing the report by clicking the corresponding tab.

You have the beginnings of a customer list report, but you still have several fields to add.

2. When you are finished reviewing the report, return to the Design tab by

clicking it.

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

Combining database fields in a text object

Instead of adding the Contact First Name and Contact Last Name fields as separate objects, you can insert both fields in a text object. This allows you to control the formatting of both fields by making changes to only one object. When you insert fields in a text object, the fields are automatically trimmed (they do not have any extra white space on either side). This is important because a field is a fixed size but the data in the fields can vary in size, leaving various amounts of unwanted white space.

To combine fields in a text object



1. Click Insert Text Object on the Insert Tools toolbar. As you move the

cursor over the report, an object frame appears next to it.

2. Insert the field to the right of the fields in the Details section.

As you drag the field, the Design tab automatically scrolls to the right, if necessary. When you click to place the object, a text object appears and the horizontal ruler of the Design tab changes to a ruler/tab selector that

Crystal Reports User’s Guide 55

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

is used for editing the text object. If you click an empty area of the report or a field object, the standard Design tab ruler appears.

3. Click once on the border of the text object to select it for resizing. Handles

appear on all sides of the object.

4. Move the cursor over the right sizing handle of the text object and

increase the width by about 1 inch. You may need to scroll to the right and continue resizing.

5. Double-click inside the text object to select it for editing. Notice the

insertion point is now flashing within the text object.

6. Select the Contact Last Name field in the Field Explorer dialog box.

Remember, you can move the Field Explorer dialog box by dragging and dropping it by its title bar.

7. Drag the field to the text object.

8. Move the cursor over the text object until the cursor becomes a Drag and

Drop cursor.

9. Release the mouse button to place the field in the text object. The cursor

now appears after the Contact Last Name field, within the text object.

10. Type a comma and a space after Contact Last Name.

11. In the Field Explorer dialog box, highlight the Contact First Name field.

12. Drag the field to the text object.

13. Move the cursor over the text object until the cursor becomes a Drag and

Drop cursor. Move the cursor to the right of the comma and space you just typed, and release the mouse button. The field will be inserted to the right of the comma and space.

14. Click the Preview tab to look at the fields you just placed.

The report should now look similar to this:

56 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Adding summary information

The next step is to add summary information to your report. Adding summary information allows you to specify the author, title, and subject of the report, as well as any keywords or comments related to the report. When you add summary information, users can find information related to the report quickly.

To add summary information



1. On the File menu, click Summary Info.

The Document Properties dialog box appears with the Summary tab active.

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

Adding a title

2. Enter information about your report in the text boxes provided. Be sure to

enter the title “Customer List” in the Title text box. This information will be used in the next section of the tutorial.

3. Click OK when finished.

As you can see, the report looks incomplete without a title. Although you can add a title using a text object, you can also tell the program to take the title information directly from the Title text box in the Document Properties dialog box.

To add a title



1. Click the Design tab.

2. In the Field Explorer, scroll down to Special Fields and expand it.

3. Choose Report Title.

4. Drag the cursor over the report. An object frame appears.

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Formatting objects

5. Position the object frame in the upper left-hand corner of the Page

Header (PH) section of the report and release the mouse button to place the object.

6. Click the Preview tab or Refresh to review your changes.

The report title object now displays the title that you entered in the Title text box of the Document Properties dialog box.

Now you can format the report title. This time, however, you will remain in the Preview tab to do the work. This will make it easier to see your work while you are formatting the title.

To format an object



1. To center the title, you will first need to expand the Title field so that it’s

about the same width as the data in your report. To do this, select the object by clicking it.

2. Position the cursor on the right edge of the object until the cursor turns

into a Resizing cursor. Drag the right edge of the field box until it is even with the right edge of the data in the Contact Name field object.

You have created a large field that extends from the left edge to the right edge of the report.

3. With the report title object still selected, click Align Center on the

Formatting toolbar. The title is centered within the object.

4. Right-click the object and choose Format Field from the shortcut menu.

5. When the Format Editor appears, click the Font tab.

6. Set the report title to a larger, bolder version of the active font by selecting

Bold from the Style list and 16 (or a point size suitable to the font you are using) from the Size list.

7. Change the color of the text by selecting Maroon from the Color palette.

Notice that the Sample box shows an example of how the text will look.

8. Click OK when finished.

9. Resize the report title object vertically to accommodate the increased

size of the title.

The title is now formatted to stand out on the report.

58 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Adding a field heading

As you can see, the Contact Name field is the only field without a heading. In this section you will create a heading.

To add a field heading



1. Click Insert Text Object on the Insert Tools toolbar.

2. Insert the text object in the Page Header section directly above the

Contact Name field.

3. Click Underline on the Formatting toolbar, and then type

into the text object.

4. Click your cursor outside the text object.

The Contact Name field now has a heading that looks just like the other field titles.

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

Contact Name

Saving the report

1. Click Save on the Standard toolbar to save your work.

2. Type Custlist.rpt in the File name box and click Save.

3. Click the Preview tab to view the report.

Since this is the first time you are saving the report, the Save As dialog box appears displaying the default directory where the file will be saved. Notice that a default file name, based on the report title you defined earlier, is also displayed.

Your report is saved to the default directory or another directory you chose.

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Record Selection

The report should now look similar to the following:

Congratulations! You have just created a basic listing report. You will continue to refine this report throughout the rest of this tutorial.

Crystal Reports allows you to limit or restrict the records that are to be included in a report. In this section you will learn how to:

• Select the records you want included in the report.

• Save a report, including the selection criteria.

For example, it may be useful to have a customer list that only lists customers from the USA. The sample data contains records from the United States and International customers. It is easy to restrict lists like this using the Select Expert.

Entering the selection criteria

When you scroll through the report, you will see that it contains information for customers from many different countries. In this step, you will limit the number of countries displayed to the USA.

To enter selection criteria



1. To begin, click the Design tab to return to design mode.

2. Click an empty area of the report to make sure all fields are deselected.

3. Click Select Expert on the Expert Tools toolbar.

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The Choose Field dialog box appears.

This dialog box lists all the fields currently in the report in the Report Fields section and then lists all fields that are available from each table in the database fields section.

4. Since you are going to base record selection on the country field, select

Country in the Fields list and click OK.

The Select Expert appears.

Imagine that you are completing the following sentence:

Select all records where a customer’s country is

You complete the sentence with the condition you want the program to use when selecting records for your report. Right now the condition is any value, which implies there is no restriction on the record selection.

5. Click the arrow on the operators box to see what other options you have.

Since you want only those records where the Country is USA, select the is equal to condition.

A new box appears on the right. The dialog box sentence now reads:

Select all records where a customer’s country is equal to

All that you need to complete the sentence is the value USA.

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Deleting a field

6. Click the arrow on the empty list. A list of all the country values appears.

Select USA from the list.

The sentence now reads:

Select all records where a customer’s country is equal to USA

7. Click OK to return to the Design tab.

8. Click the Preview tab to review the results of your work.

The Change In Record Selection Formula dialog box appears.

9. Click Refresh Data.

10. Save this version of the report without overwriting the original report by

choosing Save As from the File menu and giving the new report the name USA.rpt.

Congratulations! You have started formatting your report and have added selection criteria to it. More than that, you have learned how to manipulate your data. By now, you have a good idea of the powerful kinds of reports you can prepare.

Now that the report contains only records from the USA, displaying the Country field in the body of the report is not necessary. You can delete this field before continuing.

To delete a field



1. Select the Country field and the Country column heading using the Ctrl-

click combination.

2. Press Delete on your keyboard.

That is all it takes to delete fields from the report.

The report should now look similar to this:

62 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Balancing field spacing

Now that the Country field has been deleted, there is a large amount of white space between the City and Contact Name fields. You might be satisfied with the spacing as it stands, but it might be more readable if the columns were better balanced across the page.

To balance field spacing



1. Return to the Design tab. Select the Contact Name field and its field

heading by using the Ctrl-click combination.

2. Place the cursor over one of the two highlighted text objects and drag

them to the left, closer to the City field.

3. Click the Preview tab and review your work again.

The report should look similar to this:

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

The spacing between the fields is much better, but it looks as if the report title is off-center.

4. Click the report title object to select it.

5. Position the cursor on the right handle of the object until the cursor turns

into a Resizing cursor. Drag the right edge of the object frame until it is even with the right edge of the data in the Contact Name field object.

The report title automatically centers itself based on the size of the object.

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Grouping and sorting

Data in reports can be grouped and sorted in a variety of ways. Sorting and grouping tools provide a great deal of flexibility for customizing reports.

Grouping the report

In many reports you need to break the data into groups in order to make it easier to read and to understand. Crystal Reports lets you do this easily. For this customer list, you will group the customers by region and then sort the customers alphabetically within each group.

To group a report



1. While on the Design tab, click Insert Group on the Insert Tools toolbar.

The Insert Group dialog box appears.

2. Select Region from the Customer table in the first drop-down list.

The program takes all records with the same value in the region field and places them together in a group on the report.

3. Select in ascending order from the second drop-down list.

The region grouping will be displayed on the report in alphabetic ascending order.

4. Click OK.

Notice that two new sections now appear in the Design tab: GH1 (Group Header #1) and GF1 (Group Footer #1). This is how the program shows that the report has been grouped.

5. Click the Preview tab to see what the report looks like.

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6. If the group tree is not visible, select Toggle Group Tree on the Standard

toolbar to see the groups included in the report.

You can view the group of interest by clicking on the group name in the Group Tree. For example, to see the Texas customer group, click TX in the Group Tree. The program jumps to the Texas group, displaying that group in the Preview tab. The Group Tree allows you to quickly jump to a specific group of interest instead of scrolling through the report looking for the group. For more information on the group tree, see “Group Tree view” on page 92.

Note: For many reports, you will want to insert summaries, subtotals and

grand totals. For example, when creating a sales report rather than a customer list, you would want to calculate the total sales amount for each region. See “Sorting, Grouping, and Totaling” on page 167.

Understanding “live” group headers

When a group is inserted, a group name field is automatically inserted in the Group Header section of the report. The group name field displays the current group’s name. For example, if you group by region, and preview the report, the group header for the CA (California) group shows “CA.”

The group field name is automatically formatted to stand out from the records in the group.

Sorting records

In a typical customer list report, customer names are listed alphabetically. In this example, you will sort the customer names alphabetically within each region.

To sort records



1. While on the Preview tab, click Record Sort Expert on the Expert Tools

toolbar.

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The Record Sort Expert appears.

The Available Fields list box displays all fields currently on your report and all the fields in the data source. You can choose to sort based on any of these fields.

The Sort Fields list box displays the fields that are already sorted in the report. Since the region field has already been sorted, the sorting you are about to do will be within each region, and not for the entire report.

2. Highlight the Customer Name field and click the > arrow button to add it

to the Sort Fields list.

3. Select Ascending for the Sort Direction and click OK. The report should

now look similar to the following:

Notice that the records within each group are in alphabetic order.

66 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Completing the report

You have just one step left to complete the report. A company logo needs to be added to the first page of the report.

Inserting a company logo

In this section, you will place a company logo at the top of the first page of the report.

To insert a company logo



1. While on the Design tab, click Insert Picture on the Insert Tools toolbar.

The Open dialog box appears.

2. Choose a bitmap logo (.bmp) file and click Open.

An object frame appears as you move the cursor over the report. The object frame represents the logo you will place.

3. Position the object frame in the upper left-hand corner of the Report

Header (RH) section of the report and click once to place it.

Placing the logo in the Report Header (RH) section ensures that the logo is printed only on the first page of the report.

Note: Although there does not appear to be enough room in the Report

Header (RH) section when you place the graphic, the section will automatically expand to accommodate the picture.

4. Click the Preview tab to view the report.

The final report should look something like this (with the logo that you chose in step 2):

Quick Start

Quick start for new users

5. Save the report by clicking Save on the Standard toolbar.

You have just completed your first report.

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Report Design Concepts

chapter

Report Design Concepts

Basic report design

The purpose of this chapter is to suggest a structured approach to preparing a Crystal report. This approach includes the following elements:

• Deciding on the content of the report.

• Developing a prototype on paper.

This section has been designed to provide a conceptual understanding of the reporting process.

Deciding on the content of the report

Before you do anything else, you should outline the information you want the report to provide. The following sections provide a guide to making that outline.

Stating the purpose

What is the overall purpose of the report?

Reports are management tools. Their purpose is to help you quickly grasp the essential elements and relationships found in raw data, to help you make effective decisions. For a report to be effective, it has to present the correct data in a logical way. If it presents the wrong data, or if it presents the right data in a haphazard manner, the report may slow the decision-making process or may even encourage incorrect decisions.

A good starting place in the development of a report is to write out the purpose of the report in a sentence or two. The purpose statement helps you focus on your primary needs, and it gives the report both a starting point and a goal.

Here are some examples of purpose statements.

• The purpose of this report is to show monthly and year-to-date sales by

sales representatives, compare this year’s numbers to last year’s, and flag representatives whose sales figures do not meet company standards.

• The purpose of this report is to show sales activity for each item in

inventory, and to suggest reorder quantities based on that activity.

• The purpose of this report is to calculate bowling averages and

handicaps for each member of the bowling league.

Defining the purpose of the report before you start is a critical step in the overall process.

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Who is going to read the report?

A single report is often used by many individuals. A detailed, company-wide sales report, for example, may be used by sales representatives, the regional sales manager, the national sales manager, and the Chief Operating Officer (COO).

These individuals will be interested in different aspects of the report:

• A sales representative will use the report to evaluate individual sales

performance and compare this performance to that of other representatives in the region.

• The regional sales manager will use the report to evaluate regional

representatives and compare the region’s performance to that of other regions.

• The national sales manager will use the report to evaluate the

performance of regional managers and compare overall sales to the current sales forecasts.

• The COO will use the report to evaluate the performance of the Vice-

President of Marketing and the sales department as a whole, and to project such things as manufacturing needs and warehouse locations.

Since each user of the report has different interests, it is important to plan the report so it includes the information each user is looking for.

Report Design Concepts

Deciding on the content of the report

Determining the layout of the report

What is the report title going to be?

Write out a working title for the report. You may decide to change it later, but at least you will have a title to use when creating the prototype report.

What identifying information is needed in the header and footer?

You may wish to include the print date, information on who prepared the report, a block of text to describe the purpose of the report, the range of data covered, or something similar. If you are going to include such information, write it down so you can use it in preparing your prototype.

The information can come from a variety of sources, depending on the kind of information you plan to use.

• Information on who prepared the report might be drawn from individual

data fields in the database table(s) used. If it is to be drawn from a database table, what table? Or, what combination of tables?

• A block of text can be created as a text object and placed anywhere on

the report.

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• Crystal Reports can generate information such as the print date or page

numbers.

Finding the data

What data do you want to use in the report?

Do you know the type of database you are reporting from? Will you be reporting off a data file, SQL/ODBC, a Business View, or a Dictionary?

If you do not know, ask the database administrator in your organization for help in setting up the database type and location of the data. For more information, see Accessing Data Sources in the online help.

Are you familiar enough with the data to find the necessary information? When looking for a Customer Contact name, can the field be found in a database table?

If not, your MIS professional, database administrator, or co-workers will have to help you become familiar with the data.

What specific data should appear in the body of the report?

The body should contain all the data needed to fulfill the statement of purpose you wrote for the report. It should also contain all of the data needed by the various users that you have identified.

This step requires you to look at the available database table(s). Crystal Reports allows you to combine data from different databases when you create reports, so you have a great deal of flexibility in your work.

• Much of the data in a typical report is taken directly from data fields.

Which data fields will be used, and where are they located?

• Other data will be calculated based on data fields. Which data fields will

be used in the calculations?

• Still other data will be placed directly into the report using text objects

(headings, notes, labels, and so on).

Does the data exist or does it need to be calculated?

Some report information can be drawn directly from data fields (sales information, for example); other information will have to be calculated based on data field values (for example, sales commission, based on the relationship of sales to quota). In your planning, it can be helpful to segregate or flag data that needs to be calculated from that which can be used directly. See “Specifying formulas” on page 421.

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What types of fields contain data?

You should take the time to get to know the data type for data fields that will be used in your calculations. Since formula functions and operators work with specific kinds of data, it is important to recognize the data type you are working with, before you start any calculations. For example, some functions require numeric data, while others work with only string fields.

Manipulating the data

Do you want the data organized into groups?

How? By customer? By date? By hierarchy? Or by other criteria? Crystal Reports provides several options for grouping data in a report. See “Grouping

data” on page 171.

Do you want the data sorted based on record or group values?

Crystal Reports gives you both alternatives. See “Understanding sort options” on page 168.

Do you want the report to contain only specific records or groups?

Crystal Reports gives you the opportunity to base a report on all records in a given database, or on a limited set of records from the database. Crystal Reports can be used to select records based on simple date ranges or comparisons, or to create complex formulas to identify the records to be included. Take a few minutes to determine the records needed for the report and list the criteria to be used for selecting those records. See “Selecting

records” on page 156.

Do you want to summarize the data?

Do you want to total, average, count, or determine the maximum or minimum value included in all the values in any column on the report?

Crystal Reports allows you to do this, and it also allows the grand total (or the grand total average, grand total count, and so on) to be placed at the bottom of the selected column. See “Calculating a percentage” on page 196 and

“Selecting top or bottom N groups or percentages” on page 191.

What information should be flagged on the report?

You may want to call attention to some data by flagging it on the report. For example, non-moving inventory items are often flagged on inventory reports so they can be given special attention. You might want to flag each item that

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Deciding on the content of the report

has shown no activity during the last month, during the last three months, or during some other defined period. To flag information, identify it and any conditions that will trigger the flagging.

How do you want information flagged?

You may want to flag items with an asterisk or some other symbol, or you may want a word to appear as a flag. In any case, you should write out flagging instructions so they are handy.

Crystal Reports gives you the opportunity to underline report elements, and change the font type, size, or color used for specific report items. It allows you to put borders around items and to draw lines and boxes (to break the report into sections), set off headings, and so on. All of these formatting tools can be used to highlight key data on a report. See “Formatting” on page 231.

Determining printing area characteristics

Each report area has its own printing characteristics. It is important to understand these characteristics because they affect when and how often different report objects get printed.

In what order will the areas print on the report?

Areas print in the order they appear on the Design tab (top to bottom). If there is more than one section in an area, the sections print in the order they appear. For example, if you have three Report Header sections, all three of those sections will print, in order, before the section(s) in the Page Header area begin to print.

How often do report objects print?

The way objects print will determine how you design your report. This will help you decide where to place charts, Cross-Tabs, and formulas to get specific results.

Report Header

Objects placed in the Report Header area print once, at the beginning of the report.

• Charts and Cross-Tabs placed in this area contain data for the entire report.

Note: Both charts and Cross-Tabs can filter report data by using a Group

Sort; in such cases, the data shown in the chart or Cross-Tab is a subset of the data for the entire report.

• Formulas placed in this area are evaluated once, at the beginning of the

report.

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Page Header

Objects placed in the Page Header area print at the beginning of each new page.

• Charts or Cross-Tabs cannot be placed in this section.

• Formulas placed in this area are evaluated once per page, at the

beginning of each new page.

Group Header

Objects placed in the Group Header area print at the beginning of each new group.

• Charts and Cross-Tabs placed in this area contain data just for the group.

• Formulas placed in this area are evaluated once for each group, at the

beginning of the group.

Details area

Objects placed in the Details area print with each new record.

• Charts or Cross-Tabs cannot be placed in this area.

• Formulas placed in this area are evaluated once for each record.

Group Footer

Objects placed in the Group Footer area print at the end of each group.

• Charts and Cross-Tabs placed in this area contain data just for the group.

• Formulas placed in this area are evaluated once for each group, at the

end of the group.

Report Footer

Objects placed in the Report Footer area print once at the end of the report.

• Charts and Cross-Tabs placed in this area contain data for the entire

report.

Note: Both charts and Cross-Tabs can filter report data by using a Group

Sort; in such cases, the data shown in the chart or Cross-Tab is a subset of the data for the entire report.

• Formulas placed in this area are evaluated once, at the end of the report.

Page Footer

Objects placed in the Page Footer area print at the bottom of each page.

• Charts and Cross-Tabs cannot be placed in this area.

• Formulas placed in this area are evaluated once per page, at the end of

each new page.

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Developing a prototype on paper

While a paper prototype is useful regardless of your level of expertise with Crystal Reports, it is particularly valuable when you are first learning the program. With the paper prototype in hand, you can put your full effort into learning and using the commands, rather than into trying to design and learn at the same time.

To design a paper prototype



1. Get the same size paper you will be using for the finished report.

2. Position the title and other descriptive header information, using boxes or

lines to represent report elements.

3. Position the footer information.

4. Review the page layout for balance.

5. Look at the information you intend to include in the body of the report:

• Count the number of fields being used and estimate the appropriate

spacing between fields.

• Use rectangles to pencil in the fields within the estimated spacing.

• Change the spacing if you need to.

• Decide on a logical sequence for presenting the data in the body of

the report.

• Label the fields to indicate that sequence.

6. Use small boxes to indicate group values and totals.

7. Place random flags in the column where you want flags to appear.

8. Darken any elements you want highlighted to make them stand out from

the rest of the prototype.

9. Review the finished product for layout and balance, and make changes

as needed.

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Introduction to Reporting

chapter

Introduction to Reporting

Report creation options

Each time you create a new report, you have three options:

• Use a Report Creation Wizard.

• Use another report as a model.

• Create a report from scratch.

You will probably use each option at some time.

Report Creation Wizards

The Report Creation Wizards help create reports as quickly as possible and many new users and developers alike prefer to create the majority of their reports using them. All you have to do is choose the wizard that most closely matches your report type. The wizard walks you through the process of creating reports step-by-step.

Another report

To build a new report based on one that already exists, another report can be used as a model. Open the report you want to use in this way by selecting the Open File option and save it to a new file using Save As (found on the File menu). This method is useful to:

• Create a new report with a different grouping or different record selection

than that of an existing report.

• Reconstruct a report based on an earlier time period using the same

report structure used today.

• Create an entirely new report based on a set of databases that are linked

in another report. You can create a report and delete the fields without disturbing the underlying links. Then, without relinking, you can build all your new reports based on this report.

Crystal Reports also lets you format a report by applying a template. See

“Using a template” on page 232 for more information.

New report

The Blank Report option is used to create a report from scratch. This is useful when you want the full flexibility and control of building a report from the ground up, or when a report type is different from the many report types available in the wizards.

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Introduction to Reporting

Choosing data sources and database fields

The Blank Report option was chosen for the “Quick start for new users” on page 48, because the process of creating a report from scratch most fully illustrates the basics of reporting.

Choosing data sources and database fields

Crystal Reports makes it simple to select data sources and database fields by providing easy-to-use functionality in the Database Expert dialog box and the Field Explorer dialog box. Each of these dialog boxes uses the familiar Windows tree structure to allow you to navigate through the possible choices.

The Database Expert

The Database Expert provides an integrated tree view of all data sources you can use with Crystal Reports. In the Database Expert, you can select from the following as a data source for your report:

• A currently connected data source.

• An SQL command that has been saved to the BusinessObjects

Enterprise Repository.

• A data source that has been added to your Favorites folder.

• A recently accessed data source (the Database Expert automatically

maintains a list of such data sources for you).

• An existing data source (for example, a data file residing locally, or an

ODBC data source that has already been set up).

In the Database Expert, you can also specify links between database tables when you have selected more than one table for your report.

Data tab

Tree View

The Data tab of the Database Expert shows a tree view of possible data sources you can select when creating a report. The tree—in the Available Data Sources list—is made up of folders for:

• Current Connections

• Favorites

• History

• Create New Connection

• Repository

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Choosing data sources and database fields

The Create New Connections folder contains subfolders for many popular data sources. Among these, you’ll find:

• Access/Excel (DAO)

• Database Files

• ODBC (RDO)

• OLAP

• OLE DB (ADO)

Note: The data source options available in the Create New Connections

folder depend on the data access components selected during installation.

For a brief description of each of these folders and subfolders, see “Selecting

the data source” on page 94.

Shortcut Menu

You can right-click any item in the Available Data Sources list of the Database Expert to see a shortcut menu with the following options:

• Add to Report

Use this option to add a table or stored procedure to your new report. This option is also available by clicking the > arrow on the Database Expert.

• Add to Favorites

Use this option to add a selected data source to the Favorites folder.

• Remove from Report

Use this option to remove a table or stored procedure from your report. This option is also available by clicking the < arrow on the Database Expert.

• Properties

Use this option to obtain detailed information on the selected item.

• Rename Favorite

Use this option to rename a data source in the Favorites folder.

• Delete Favorite

Use this option to remove a data source from the Favorites folder.

• Remove from repository

Use this option to delete an existing SQL command from the BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository.

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Links tab

Introduction to Reporting

Choosing data sources and database fields

• Rename repository object

Use this option to rename an existing SQL command in the BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository.

• Options

Use this option to set the global options that appear on the Database tab of the Options dialog box.

• Refresh

Use this option to refresh the list of available data sources in the Database Expert.

Database tables are linked so records from one database match related records from another. For example, if you activate a Suppliers table and a Product table, the databases are linked so that each product (from the Product table) can be matched up with the supplier (from the Supplier table) that made the product.

The majority of reports will probably require data from two or more tables, so linking will be necessary. The process of linking is made easy by using the Links tab of the Database Expert. See “Linking tables” on page 489.

The Field Explorer

Use the Field Explorer dialog box to insert, modify or delete fields on the Design and Preview tabs of Crystal Reports. To see the Field Explorer, select the Field Explorer command from the View menu.

Tree View

The Field Explorer shows a tree view of database fields and special fields that you can add to your report. It also shows formula fields, SQL expression fields, parameter fields, running total fields, and group name fields that you have defined for use in your report.

Fields that have already been added to the report, or fields that have been used by other fields (such as formula fields, groups, running total fields, summaries, and so on) have a green check mark next to them.

Toolbar and Shortcut Menu

The Field Explorer’s toolbar provides buttons with tool tips and hot-key combinations. You can right-click any item in the tree view to bring up a shortcut menu.

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Choosing data sources and database fields

The toolbar offers these functions:

• Insert to Report

Use this option to add a field to the report. You can insert more than one field at a time by selecting multiple fields, right-clicking, and choosing Insert to Report.

Alternatively, to insert a field, you can drag and drop it in the Design or Preview tabs.

• Browse

Use this option to browse data for a database field, formula field or SQL expression field.

Note: On the shortcut menu, this option is called Browse Data.

• New

Use this option to create a formula field, SQL expression field, parameter field or running total field.

• Edit

Use this option to modify an existing formula field, SQL expression field, parameter field or running total field.

• Rename

Use this option to modify the name of an existing formula field, SQL expression field, parameter field or running total field.

• Delete

Use this option to remove a formula field, SQL expression field, parameter field or running total field. You can also select multiple fields, right-click, and choose Delete to remove them all at once.

In addition to the functions available on the toolbar, the shortcut menu offers these functions as well:

• Set Prompt Order

Use this option to open the Set Prompt Order dialog box, in which you can change the prompt order of your parameter fields.

• Show Field Type

Use this option to see the field type (string, number, and so on) when you’re looking at a list of database fields. The length of string fields is included in brackets at the end of their names.

• Refresh

Use this option to refresh the list of available fields in the Field Explorer.

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Group Name Fields

You can insert an existing Group Name field shown in the Field Explorer by right-clicking it and selecting Insert to Report. Unlike a formula field, parameter field or running total field, however, you cannot create a Group Name field through the Field Explorer. (A Group Name field is created when you insert a group.)

About the report design environment

Design tab

When working with Crystal Reports, you will probably use the Design tab more than any other part of the program.

Introduction to Reporting

The Design tab is the place you do most of the initial work when creating a report. It designates and labels the various sections of the report. You can do the initial formatting, place objects in the sections where you want them to appear, specify sorting, grouping, and totaling needs, and so forth.

The Design tab provides a very efficient environment for designing a report because you work in the tab with data representations, not with data itself. When a field is placed on the report, the program uses a frame to identify the field on the tab; it does not retrieve the data. Thus, you can add and delete fields and other objects, move them around, set up complex formulas, and more, without tying up the computer or network resources needed to gather the data.

The report created in the Design tab is a kind of virtual report; it has the structure and instructions for creating the final report, but it is not the report itself. To turn the Design tab report into a final report or into a report that you can fine-tune, you “just add data.” You do this whenever you preview the report, print it, or output it in any other way. The actual data will now appear in the report.

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Design tab areas

When you first begin creating a report, Crystal Reports automatically creates five areas in the Design tab.

• Report Header

This section is generally used for the report title and other information you want to appear at the beginning of the report. It can also be used for charts and cross-tabs that include data for the entire report.

• Page Header

This section is generally used for information that you want to appear at the top of each page. This can include such things as chapter names, the name of the document, and other similar information. This section can also be used to display field titles above the fields on a report.

• Details

This section is used for the body of the report, and is printed once per record. The bulk of the report data generally appears in this section.

• Report Footer

This section is used for information you want to appear only once at the end of the report (such as grand totals) and for charts and cross-tabs that include data for the entire report.

• Page Footer

This section usually contains the page number and any other information you want to appear on the bottom of each page.

If a group, summary, or subtotal is added to the report, the program creates two additional sections:

• Group Header

This section typically holds the group name field, and can be used to display charts or cross-tabs that include data specific to the group. It is printed once at the beginning of a group.

• Group Footer

This section generally holds the summary value, if any, and can be used to display charts or cross-tabs. It is printed once at the end of a group.

When a group, summary, or subtotal is added, the Group Header area appears directly above the Details area and the Group Footer area appears directly below the Details area.

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If you set up additional groups, the program creates new group areas between the Details area and the existing Group Header and Group Footer area(s).

Like the original areas, each of these newly added areas can contain one or more sections. By default, they each contain a single section.

Identifying and working with areas and sections

By default, each area contains only a single section. The name for that section appears directly to the left of the section. If you have multiple sections in an area, the sections are designated as a, b, c, and so forth.

Note:

• Initials, such as RH, PH, D, PF, RF, and so on, are used to identify each

section if you have selected the Short Section Names check box in the Design View area of the Options dialog box.

• If you right-click the shaded area containing a section name, a shortcut

menu appears with section-specific options.

If you have selected the Show Rulers options on the Layout tab of the Options dialog box, the program displays a section ruler immediately to the left of each section. The section ruler is used to add, remove, and move guidelines, and to provide a visual reference when you are placing objects. See

“Designing with guidelines” on page 246.

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Whenever a new section is added, the program creates a ruler for that section. See “Using multiple sections in reports” on page 218.

Other Design tab capabilities

There are several other capabilities built into the Design tab. With the Design tab, you can:

• Resize a section by dragging its boundary. See “Resizing a section” on

page 217.

• Split a section (create two sections from one) by clicking its left boundary.

See “Splitting a section” on page 217.

• Add horizontal and vertical guidelines by clicking the rulers. See

“Designing with guidelines” on page 246.

• Zoom in and out on a report at any magnification from 25% to 400% of

the original size. See “Using the zoom feature” on page 106.

Section ruler.

Preview tab

To preview a report before printing it, click Print Preview on the Standard toolbar.

The program gathers the data, makes the necessary calculations, and displays the report in the Preview tab. With the data in place, you can review the spacing and formatting of your report and see the actual results of all your summaries, formula calculations, and record and group selections.

In true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) fashion, you can work directly on this live data, fine-tuning it until the report has the exact look you want.

The program works with data in the following manner:

• The first time the Preview tab is used, it retrieves data from your

underlying data source(s) and saves it with the report (unless you have set up the program not to save data).

• From that point on, the program uses the saved data whenever you

preview the report unless you specifically refresh it or add a field that requires the program to retrieve new data.

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Standard view

Introduction to Reporting

About the report design environment

Crystal Reports provides two views for previewing a report:

• Standard view

• Group Tree view

In standard view, the report is displayed a page at a time. Using the navigation buttons in the Preview tab, you can move to the beginning or end of the report, or you can move backward and forward through the report one page at a time. For shorter reports or reports in which you’re primarily interested in seeing the “bottom line” totals, the standard view provides all of the functionality you need.

The Data Age indicator

The Data Age indicator indicates the date the data was last refreshed or initially retrieved, whichever is the most recent. If the data was initially retrieved or refreshed today, it indicates the time it happened.

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Group Tree view

The Group Tree view can be shown or hidden using Toggle Group Tree on the Standard toolbar.

The Group Tree view presents a split screen:

• The right pane displays the report.

• The left pane displays a high level outline of the report, showing the

hierarchy of groups and subgroups in a familiar tree format.

The Group Tree normally displays the names of the groups and subgroups you created in your report. You can, however, customize these names using the Options tab of the Insert Group or Change Group Options dialog box. For more information on customizing Group Names in the Group Tree view, see

“Grouping data” on page 171.

When you click the tree node for the group that interests you, the program jumps immediately to the part of the report that contains the information for that group. For longer reports or reports in which you wish to jump back and forth between different groups, the Smart Navigation features of the Group Tree view make your work extremely efficient.

Comparisons with the Design tab

You have the same formatting capabilities in the Preview tab as you do in the Design tab. Menus (both menu bar and shortcut menus) and toolbars remain active, providing essentially the same functionality you have when working with a report in the Design tab. However, when you are making numerous changes, it is quicker to make the changes in the Design tab. Some additional things to consider are:

• The Design tab and Preview tab are tied together internally. Any changes

made in one are reflected in the other.

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• The Preview tab has a single vertical ruler at the left of the tab rather than

the individual section rulers seen in the Design tab. The functionality of the ruler is the same.

• The Preview tab identifies report sections in the shaded area to the left of

the data. With a quick look you can tell which report section the data is printing from. While section names appear only once in the Design tab, they print each time a section prints in the Preview tab.

• The Record counter, the Data Age indicator (see “The Data Age

indicator” on page 91), and the Page Forward/Page Back controls (see “Preview tab” on page 90), are all active in the Preview tab.

• The Preview tab highlights every value when you select a field; whereas,

only the field frame is highlighted in the Design tab.

Working in the Preview tab has a different feel from working in the Design tab.

Each field in a database contains dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of values, depending on the number of records in the database. When you place a field in the Design tab, a single field frame represents all those values. When you highlight the field, sizing handles appear on the frame and the frame changes color.

In the Preview tab, however, you are working with the actual data. Instead of a field frame representing many field values, the values themselves appear. Some additional things to consider are:

• When you highlight a field or formula field value, you are actually

selecting every value in the field:

• The program places a sizing frame around the specific value you

select.

• It highlights every other value in the field.

• Likewise, when you select a summary value, you are actually selecting all

the related summary values:

• The program places a sizing frame around the specific value you

select.

• It highlights all the related summary values.

Aside from the differences in appearance, the process of building and modifying a report is the same in both the Design tab and the Preview tab. You should find it easy to work with your reports in both places.

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HTML Preview tab

To see an HTML rendering of your Crystal report as it will appear when published to the web, click HTML Preview on the Standard toolbar.

When you need to make sure that your report design is appropriate and correct over the web in a zero-client environment, the HTML Preview option lets you see an instant rendering of your report to HTML without leaving the Crystal Reports design environment. Unlike the Preview tab, which shows the true report format, the HTML Preview tab shows a converted format. By switching between the two tabs, you can make adjustments in your report design to yield the best results on the web.

In the case of reports that are published to BusinessObjects Enterprise (managed reports), you don’t have do any special configuration to make the HTML Preview feature work.

For stand-alone reports (unmanaged reports), the program must use the Report Application Sever (RAS) to generate the preview. In this case, you need to configure the HTML Preview feature. Do this in the Smart Tag & HTML Preview tab of the Options dialog box in Crystal Reports.

For information about how to configure the HTML Preview Options, search the Crystal Reports online help for “Smart Tag & HTML Preview tab (Options dialog box).”

Creating a new report

Selecting the data source

After deciding which option you want to use for creating your report (see “Report

creation options” on page 82), the next step is to select a data source to use.

Most data sources can be chosen through the Database Expert dialog box. The Database Expert appears when you create a report from scratch using Blank Report, or when you choose Database Expert from the Database menu.

Note: You also select a data source in the Report Creation Wizards. The

Data screen in all of the Report Creation Wizards, except the OLAP Report Creation Wizard, is much like the Database Expert dialog box.

To select a data source



1. Choose Database Expert from the Database menu.

The Database Expert dialog box appears.

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2. Use the tree view in the Available Data Sources list of the Data screen to

select your data source:

• Current Connections

This folder shows a list of data sources you are currently connected to.

• Favorites

This folder shows a list of data sources you commonly use and have maintained in your Favorites list.

• History

This folder shows a list of data sources you have used recently. The last five data sources used are displayed.

• Create New Connection

This folder shows subfolders for various data sources you can connect to.

• Repository

This folder shows you the contents of your repository through the BusinessObjects Enterprise Explorer. Click Make New Connection to open the BusinessObjects Enterprise Explorer; from this dialog box, you can select an existing SQL command or Business View. For more information, search the Crystal Reports online help for “SQL commands” or “Business Views.”

Some popular choices in the Create New Connection folder are described here:

• Access/Excel (DAO)

This option lets you connect to a supported database type (Access, dBASE, Excel, Lotus, and so on). You can create a new connection using the Make New Connection option.

• Database Files

This option shows a list of standard PC databases that reside locally. You can use Find Database File to browse for a PC database using the Open dialog box.

• ODBC (RDO)

This option shows a list of ODBC data sources you have already configured for use.

• OLAP

This option opens the OLAP Connection Browser so you can choose an OLAP cube as a data source.

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Adding tables

• OLE DB (ADO)

This option shows a list of OLE DB providers you have already configured for use. You can also specify a Microsoft Data Link file to use.

Note: The data source options available in the Create New Connections

folder depend on the data access components selected during installation.

After selecting the data source, you can add one or more tables to base your report on.

To add a table



1. Choose Database Expert from the Database menu.

The Database Expert dialog box appears.

2. On the Data tab, search for the database you want to use in your report.

See “Selecting the data source” on page 94.

3. In the Available Data Sources list, select the table you want to add to your

report and click the > arrow to add it to the Selected Tables list.

You can insert more than one table at a time by selecting multiple tables, right-clicking, and choosing Add to Report. You can also drag and drop tables to the Selected Tables list.

Linking multiple tables

If the report contains data from two or more database tables, they need to be linked at this point when creating reports.

Note: It isn’t necessary to link tables in reports created from a query or

command because any links required by the data have already been processed.

To add and link multiple tables



1. Choose Database Expert from the Database menu.

The Database Expert dialog box appears.

2. On the Data tab, select the tables you want to add to your report. See

“Adding tables” on page 96.

The Links tab appears in the Database Expert.

3. Click the Links tab to display the databases currently available for linking.

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Crystal Reports automatically links tables by name or key when possible.

4. To create links manually, drag a field from one table to a field in another

table. If successful, a link line is created. If unsuccessful, a message is issued.

Note: You can link tables by table name or by foreign key information.

5. If you’ve deleted links and you want to recreate them automatically, click

Link.

6. Click OK when finished.

Note: When manually creating links, the field you are linking “to” must be

of the same data type as the field you are linking from. When a native connection is used, the field you are linking “to” does not have to be indexed. For more information, see “Indexed tables” on page 487.

The Database Expert closes, and you are returned to your report. The linked databases are now available for use in your report. If you are not satisfied with the link, you can modify it using the Links tab of the Database Expert.

Placing data on the report

Placing data on a report is a very important task. You need to know what type of data should be placed on the report and where on the report it should be placed.

Database fields

Much of the data placed on a report are database fields, displaying data as it is stored in the database. For example, in the “Quick start for new users” on page 48, the Customer Name, City and Country fields are placed on the report. Normally, database fields will be placed in the Detail section, but under certain circumstances, they will be placed in other sections of the report.

To insert a database field



1. On the Standard toolbar, click Field Explorer.

The Field Explorer dialog box appears. To speed the report building process, this dialog box remains on-screen until you close it. You can move this dialog box wherever you wish.

2. Expand the Database Fields folder to see all the tables chosen from the

database(s).

3. Expand the individual tables to see all the fields they contain.

4. Select the field you want to appear in the report.

5. Click Browse to review the values in the selected field.

6. Click Insert to Report to place it in the report.

Formula fields

To display data that is a calculated value, you need to create a formula field and place that formula field on the report. For example, if the database only stores the order dates and ship dates for orders but you need to display the number of days it takes to ship the order, you must create a formula field that will calculate the number of days between ordering and shipping. This is just one example of the use of formula fields. See “Using Formulas” on page 417, for an introduction to formulas.

SQL Expression fields

SQL expressions are like formulas, but they are written in Structured Query Language (SQL), not in the Crystal Reports formula language. An SQL expression can be used to query the database for specific sets of data. You can sort, group, and select based on SQL expression fields.

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

To create an SQL Expression field

1. On the Standard toolbar, click Field Explorer.

The Field Explorer dialog box appears.

2. Scroll down to SQL Expression Fields and highlight it. Click New.

The SQL Expression Name dialog box appears.

3. Enter a name in the Name box, and then click OK.

The Formula Workshop appears with the SQL Expression Editor active.

4. Type the expression in the SQL Expression Editor.

5. Click Save.

Parameter fields

To prompt the user of a report to enter information, create a parameter field. Think of a parameter as a question that the user needs to answer before the report is generated. The information users enter, or the way they respond, determines what appears in the report. For example, in a report used by salespeople, there might be a parameter that asks the user to choose a region. The report would return the results for the specific region, instead of returning the results for all of the regions. See “Parameter Fields and

Prompts” on page 437 for an introduction to parameter fields.

Note: For an overview of the formula language, see “Formula

components and syntax” on page 419.

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Running total fields

Special fields

To display a total that evaluates each record and provides a running sum of all the values in a field (or all the values in a certain set of values), a running total field needs to be created and placed in the report. If the first three values in a field were 2, 4, and 6, a running total would print 2, and then 6 (the sum of 2 +

4), and then 12 (the sum of 2 + 4 + 6). See “Running Totals” on page 203, for an introduction to running totals.

To display information such as Page Numbers, Print Date, and Report Comments use the commands in the Special Fields tree view of the Field Explorer dialog box.

To insert a special field



Crystal Reports allows you to easily insert Page Number, Record Number, Group Number, Print Date, and Total Page Count fields, among others, into your report.

1. On the Standard toolbar, click Field Explorer.

The Field Explorer dialog box appears.

2. Scroll down to Special Fields and expand it by clicking.

3. Choose a command from the Special Fields list to insert in the report.

Each special field is inserted into the report as an object. An object frame appears. You can now place it on the report.

Note: To change the formatting of an inserted object, click the object to select

it and click Format on the Expert Tools toolbar. The Format Editor appears where you can make the desired changes. See “Formatting” on page 231.

Text objects

Text objects are used in reports for a multitude of purposes. They are a powerful way of inserting titles; labeling summaries and other data on your report; and of easily combining database fields. For example, in the “Quick

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Business objects CRYSTAL REPORTS 11 User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Contents

Introduction to Crystal Reports 11

About Crystal Reports

About this guide

Online help

Locate information quickly

Sample Reports

Business Objects information resources

What’s New in Crystal Reports 11

Introduction

Powerful report authoring

Improved usability

Expanded application-development capabilities

General description

Report Application Server (RAS)

Report Designer Component (RDC)

Crystal Reports .NET

Integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise 11

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Installing Crystal Reports 11

Installation requirements

Minimum installation requirements

Installing Crystal Reports on a local machine

Creating an installation point and installing from a network server

Creating an installation point for Crystal Reports

Installing Crystal Reports from a network

Customizing your installation

Running a silent installation

Upgrading Crystal Reports components

Quick Start

Learning how to use Crystal Reports

Sample data - Xtreme.mdb

Report Creation Wizards

Standard

Cross-Tab

Mailing Label

OLAP

Quick start for new users

Before you begin

Creating the report

Selecting a database to use

Report sections

Inserting a field

Understanding fields

Adding additional fields

Selecting fields

Resizing fields

Reviewing your work

Combining database fields in a text object

Adding summary information

Adding a title

Formatting objects

Adding a field heading

Saving the report

Record Selection

Entering the selection criteria

Deleting a field

Balancing field spacing

Grouping and sorting

Grouping the report

Understanding “live” group headers

Sorting records

Completing the report

Inserting a company logo

Quick start for advanced users

Report Design Concepts

Basic report design

Deciding on the content of the report

Stating the purpose

What is the overall purpose of the report?

Who is going to read the report?

Determining the layout of the report

What is the report title going to be?

What identifying information is needed in the header and footer?

Finding the data

What data do you want to use in the report?