Using Crystal Reports with Visual Fox. Pro. Your questions answered about this popular report writer. Although Visual Fox. Pro has a very capable report generator, many developers. One of the most popular of.

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Crystal Reports. In this article, we'll take a look at what CR has. VFP professional, and the implications of using it with Foxpro.

I am happy with VFP's own report generator. Why should I switch to Crystal. Reports? Put simply, Crystal Reports is considerably more powerful than Visual Fox. Pro's own. reporting tool. VFP can handle most reporting tasks, but you sometimes need to. Crystal Reports, on. Even taking account of the many enhanced features that.

I’m sure many die-hard FoxPro developers are curious if Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP 2 will install and run on Windows 10. Well, I wanted to be one of the first to find out. Using Crystal Reports with Visual FoxPro Your questions answered about this popular report writer. Although Visual FoxPro has a very capable report generator, many. I thought for sure that installing 32bit SQL Server would solve.

VFP 9. 0, CR is still the more powerful tool. Here are some example of things which CR can do much more easily than VFP: Intelligently deal with page breaks, for example so that groups are kept. Show different page headers or footers. Print several small reports on the same. Generate cross- tabs, for instance with months across to the top. Display drill- down charts - where clicking.

These are just a few examples. In many cases, things which are awkward to do. VFP can be done in CR with a simple command or menu choice. Does Crystal Reports work with VFP data? Yes. CR provides three ways of accessing Visual Fox. Pro tables: Native access.

This is the simplest of the. Fox. 2X tables, that is, DBFs created in Foxpro 2. BASE and Clipper) or those created in VFP and copied to Fox. COPY TO .. TYPE FOX2. X). ODBC. This method works with any VFP table, including those in a DBC. The. disadvantage is that you need to create an ODBC data source and distribute.

Keep in mind too that Microsoft has not updated the. Fox. Pro ODBC driver since VFP 6. OLE DB. This is the preferred method, and. Fox. Pro tables. Can I base my report on local views rather than tables? Yes. CR doesn't know or care if the data is coming from a table or a view. If I distribute reports to my users, will they need to install Crystal.

Reports in order to view or print them? No. As a VFP developer, you will probably want to integrate the reports into. Windows 7 Ati Catalyst Control Center. If you do, your users won't need CR itself in order to view. If you prefer to distribute free- standing reports, it is possible to.

This ability was available in Crystal Reports 7. Is it possible to deploy reports on an intranet so that users can view. Yes. There is a component called the Crystal Web Component Server (CWCS). This component comes with the Professional and Developer. Crystal Reports. You install it on a web server, then copy your report files (RPT. You must also give your users a.

Professional and Developer. In fact, there is a choice or viewer programs, aimed at different. For Internet Explorer users, the Active. X control is. usually the best choice.

Once you have done all this, your users will be able to view any of the. When they. do, they will see a report preview window which shows the report exactly as you. Note that this is the actual report, not an HTML rendition of it. The users will be able to refresh the report. I want to print my reports from within my VFP application. Is that. possible with Crystal Reports? Certainly. In fact, you can add the full functionality of Crystal Reports to.

VFP apps. There are several ways of doing that. The recommended approach is. Report Design Component (RDC). The RDC is an Active. X Automation server which exposes the CR object model to. Essentially, it lets you perform any task programmatically.

CR itself. For a start, you can open a report. More interestingly, you can modify its contents and. For example, you could let the user choose the fields to. Just about the only thing which the RDC cannot do is preview the report on. That's because the RDC itself has no user interface.

To preview the. report, you need to use another component, known as the Report Viewer control. The control will.

It is highly customisable, so if. To use the RDC and the Report Viewer control, you will need Crystal Reports Developer edition. Using the RDC, is it possible to run reports which are not tied to any. I'd like to decide the data source at run time. If you are using natively- accessed tables (that is, Fox. X tables; see above). With ODBC and OLE DB data sources, you change two properties to switch to a.

DBC or a different one. What you. can't do is to programmatically switch between natively- accessed tables and ODBC. OLE DB data sources.

However, that's rarely a problem. I have heard that Crystal Reports comes with its own programming language. You can use. it, for example, to dynamically control the grouping in the report or to apply.

Although the formula language can add a great deal of intelligence to a. VFP or the Report Design.

Component. The formulae are actually part of the report, and are evaluated as. The RDC is used to invoke CR features and to make global. The two techniques are largely. In fact, CR has, not one, but two distinct formula languages: the. Crystal syntax and a newer Basic- like syntax. You can use whichever one.

You can even use them both in the same report. We already have some reports created in CR. These prompt the user for. Is it possible to hide this prompt and.

VFP application instead? Yes. This is one of the many things that you can do with the RDC. In general. report parameters are not particularly useful when you integrate the report into. Will I have the same problem with CR? As you probably know, VFP's report files can store the name of the. Once this information gets into the report file, it. The usual method is to hack the FRX.

Foxstuff. article, Controlling report settings at run time). Crystal Reports does not have this problem. In general, the report will go to. Windows default printer on the user's system, although the user can select a. Alternatively, if you are using. RDC, you can programmatically specify the destination printer, paper source. This is just a matter of setting the appropriate.

How easy is it to export my reports to. Microsoft Word, Excel, HTML or PDF? Very easy. The Export menu supports all those.

In most cases, you can choose to save the exported. If you. are using the RDC, you can also export your reports programmatically. According to the documentation, it is possible to design a report within. CR itself. How do I go. You can't - at least, not in VFP.

This is a feature of the RDC, but it only. Visual Basic. On the other hand, it's an easy matter to. VFP development environment to the CR report designer. Once you've done that, you can open a file in the report designer simply.

Modify button. Is it possible to programmatically create a new report from scratch within. Yes. The RDC has a method which lets you create an ? What. are the licensing issues? There are certain DLLs that you must distribute with your application, some.

If you are using VFP 6. Setup Wizard will. With more recent versions, the number of. DLLs has grown considerably, and it can be hard to find out which ones you need.

Things are easier. Install. Shield, as all the. If you own Crystal Reports Developer edition, you have. DLLs without royalties. As an exception, if your.

Business Objects, and this does involve royalty payments. How easy is it to learn the Report Design Component? The RDC is an Active. X Automation server. If you have used Active. X Automation. (also known as COM Automation) with Word or Excel, you will be off to a good start. If not, you will need to.

Having done that, you need to get to. CR object model, which can be quite daunting. However, you don't. Unfortunately, the RDC is not very well documented - at least, not from a VFP.

There is a help file and a manual (in PDF format), but these don't do a particularly good. RDC or the object model. They do include some sample code. Visual Basic. In fact, the entire documentation is based. VB as your programming language.

What about third- party books? For some specific recommendations, please see our books page. How good is Business Objects' support for Visual Fox. Pro developers? It's not at all good. For the most part. Business Objects' support staff are.

Visual Fox. Pro. The same.