The brand new Crystal Reports 12 (or 2008) no longer includes the sample MDB that has been provided ever since I started working with Crystal 12 year ago. You still have sample reports but they all read XML data that is on the BO web site. You can download the XML data but I still prefer the MS Access format, because it can be made to behave just like the normal SQL based data that everyone uses. It is what is used in all of my books and is also used in most of the BO Knowledgebase examples. If you don’t have a version of Crystal with the MDB you can download a copy from the SAP support site.

If you are going to use one of these with the sample reports in my guide books then you should set up an ODBC connection to the database by following these steps:

From the “Start” button select Settings > Control Panel
Select the “ODBC Administrator”.
If you don’t see the icon, check in the folder “Administrative Tools”.
Click on the tab marked “System DSN” and then click the “ADD” button.
Highlight the “Microsoft Access driver” and click “Finish”.
In the box marked “Data Source Name” type “Xtreme Sample”.
Optionally you can type this again in the Description box.
Under “Database” click the “Select” button.
Point it to Xtreme.mdb which you downloaded and extracted.
Click OK to close both windows.
Close any open control panel windows.