Limitation of crystal report includes :
To improve the performance of Crystal Reports :
Reports in a Windows Forms application as opposed to say rolling our own reports as HTML and displaying them in the Internet Explorer control.
Advantages :
Disadvantages :
Crystal report is a window based report writer that enables the programmer to make reports from different data sources with a minimum of written code. Crystal report can access data from various data-bases and can synchronize data from multiple databases into a single report.
Enforce and, Enforce to or Enforce from in crystal reports are chose to enforce link created in report. Enforcing a link between tables make sure that the report’s respective SQL uses this link, regardless of whether fields are required from one or both the involved tables. The default function is unenforced links, which me that the crystal report uses the link only if the report’s respective SELECT statement needs it.
You can create your own query by using tool “Crystal SQL Designer”. You can insert your own SQL statement, it will save your file as “.qry”. Also, while creating a report instead of using “Database” button use “Crystal SQL Statement” button.
With Crystal reports explorer one can quickly create and modify reports on the web, and since its built on the trusted Business object enterprise platform, it can easily manage massive user loads, individual access, and application customization.
Yes, we can suppress printing if no records are fetched. Select ‘Report Options’ in File menu item. ‘Report Options’ dialog box will pop up. In that there is one option ‘ Suppress printing if no records’ Check this option. If no records are found then nothing will be printed on the report.
Yes, it is possible to create your own formulas in Crystal reports. For that from insert menu item choose “Formula Field”. Write the formula in “Formula Editor”, here you will see “Function Tree” , “Field Tree” , “Operator Tree” which will show the report fields, functions supported by crystal reports, operators etc.
No, Crystal report does not support all the functions. Like Decode function is there in SQL but not there is crystal report. You need to convert that in crystal report format (in if and else etc.). However if you use ‘.qry’ files then it take the SQL as such. There is no need of changing any syntax.
We can very well give parameters to the report. For creating parameters select ‘Parameter Field’ in Insert menu item. ‘Create Parameter Field’ dialog box will popped up, it will ask for the name of parameter, prompting text and datatype. Now when you run the report it will prompt for these parameters.
Generally we use Crystal Reports with VB@However we can make crystal report standalone application also. But for that limitation is for viewing the report user should have crystal reports installed on his/her PC.
For formatting any field just right click on it and you will get many options like ‘Format Field.’ ‘Browse field data’ etc. Click on ‘Format Field.’ You can align data, suppress, make it multiline, change the font size, style, and type, make it hyperlink etc.
If it is an amount field then you can display currency symbol also. Right click on the field select ‘Format Field’.
Crystal reports provide features like grand total, subtotal, running total etc. You can select any of these features in Insert menu item. You can sum up records on the basis of each record or on change of group using ‘Running Total ‘ option in Insert menu item.
No, it is not possible to edit SQL made by crystal reports, however you can view the SQL.
In the MainReport, you can add 255 sub reports, and you cannot add sub-report under a sub-report.
Yes, we can use stored procedure.
We can create report using more than one database like Oracle, Access. Create data source name for both the databases. Select tables from them and create the report. Only restriction is if you use two databases then you cannot see the SQL generated by crystal reports.
To create a bar-code in crystal reports, you have to follow the following steps :
Choose File–>Options menu.
In the Options dialog box :
Yes. The following steps work assuming you have Crystal Reports on the machine and the appropriate export dlls loaded.
Generated data can be exported to word doc, or in rich text format. Just click on ‘Export’ icon in the menu. Export dialog box will be popped up. It will ask for the ‘Format’ like commaseparated value (csv) etc and the ‘Destination’ like disk, application etc. After that it will ask for the file name and save the data.
Only restriction is formatting of data will be lost, but crystal report will try to maintain as much formatting as it can.
To connect crystal report to the databases, there are two ways
There are traditionally three methods to burst crystal reports by e-mail :