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Does anyone have anything for creating reports in the CPS reports module? Any documentation showing the formulas and parameters to pass through to Crystal Reports?
Been awhile since I have had to build one and just drawing a blank right now.
Thanks,
Posted : April 17, 2012 8:05 am
Topic starter
anyone seen this error when building a report in the reports module of cps?
Posted : April 17, 2012 11:52 pm
Hi Ernie:
Hmmm..funny this topic came up on the forum. We have been struggling with trying to find a "user-friendly" way of creating/building reports that allows user intereaction as well as the ability to specify their own parameters, selection criteria, menu choices, etc.
From personal experience, as well as a 4 hr. support call trying to get it to work, we discovered the "embedded" Crystal Reports report designer tool is basically useless. (BTW, we're on 9.5 sp1)
I then tried developing rpts using Crystal Report XI Developer Edition, but found I had to constantly run the rpts for our users since none of them have Crystal, and their parameters, selection criteria, etc. were always changing month-to-month (esp. in the Bus. Off. & Acctg. dpts)
The only solution that seems to hold any hope (I'm still testing different report types/scenarios) is developing the rpts using SQL and the query designer tools in SQL Report Builder 2.0, which can be downloaded FREE from Microsoft! 🙂
RB 2.0 allows one to create and/or modify rpts very similar to how they're created using CR11, and it also allows me to create parameters (like FROM/TO DATES, specify menu choices & dropdown selection criteria such as running the rpt by date of service vs. date of entry, etc.)
Once the rpt is built, I just publish it to our SQL report server, and give the users the appropriate access to the rpt as well as the URL path so they can run it themselves whenever they want using IE or Chrome. Once viewed in their browser window, they can even export the report in several different formats (including .pdf or Excel) if they want to do further data manipulations or calculations.
So far..they're happy because they can run a particular report using whatever criteria THEY want, as many times as THEY want, w/o having to call me each time. 🙂
And, if my "customers" are happy, I'm happy!
Hope this helps!
-Matt
Posted : June 8, 2012 2:42 am
Topic starter
May have to do that also. I have been able to build the criteria into CR and then have the users preview the report and then enter their criteria.
But this sounds much easier. I may need to start using SQL report builder.
Posted : June 8, 2012 3:16 am
Actually, it's up to Report Builder 3.0 now, with the release of SQL Server 2008 R2. There are some very good improvements between the versions. 🙂
We use Crystal Reports Server here to get around the not-everyone-has-Crystal problem, but given all the problems we've had with it, I don't know if I'd recommend it for a new implementation -- I'm trying to move as many reports as I can to SSRS, for both licensing reasons and the plain-text, searchable, diff-able, merge-able RDL files.
I've posted a couple of SSRS2008R2 reports to the Trading Post, one of which includes a screenshot.
Posted : June 8, 2012 3:18 am
SarekOfVulcan said:
Actually, it's up to Report Builder 3.0 now, with the release of SQL Server 2008 R2. There are some very good improvements between the versions. 🙂
We use Crystal Reports Server here to get around the not-everyone-has-Crystal problem, but given all the problems we've had with it, I don't know if I'd recommend it for a new implementation -- I'm trying to move as many reports as I can to SSRS, for both licensing reasons and the plain-text, searchable, diff-able, merge-able RDL files.
I've posted a couple of SSRS2008R2 reports to the Trading Post, one of which includes a screenshot.
What exactly is SRSS and how does it differ from crystal in syntax etc.
We are currently using crystal reports / crystal report server and I would like to explore new options that hopefully would be more flexible and easy to use.
Posted : June 8, 2012 3:44 am
SSRS is SQL Server Reporting Services -- it comes built-in with recent versions of SQL Server. The syntax is similar, but different. 🙂 You can't define formulas, but you can define calculated fields in your query that serve some of the same purposes. It takes a while to get used to adding rows and groups in the Tablix control, but if you bang your head against the wall long enough, you'll break through. 🙂
One nice thing about SSRS is that you have unfettered access to the .NET Framework. For example, I just did a report that included regular expressions, thanks to .NET.
Posted : June 8, 2012 3:51 am
SarekOfVulcan said:
SSRS is SQL Server Reporting Services -- it comes built-in with recent versions of SQL Server. . . .
One nice thing about SSRS is that you have unfettered access to the .NET Framework. For example, I just did a report that included regular expressions, thanks to .NET.
What are you using to write these reports? Currently I have some experience using C# express 2010, and I may just be interested enough at looking into this a bit more. I am off to try and google it. thanks!
Posted : June 8, 2012 3:54 am
I'm using "SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio", which comes as part of the SQL Server 2008 install, but you can work from http://mySQLServer/Reports using the Report Builder, as Matt mentions above. I prefer using BIDS because that lets me use Subversion for version control, instead of having to export the RDL files from the server. As far as I can tell, the code within an SSRS report needs to be written in VB, but you can call out to assemblies in whatever language. I wrote one in C# using some Levenshtein distance code I found on the web so that I could do fuzzy matching.
Posted : June 8, 2012 4:02 am
