Most of my readers know that I don’t think much of the various Crystal Reports certifications that have been offered over the years.  But for those of you find these valuable, you should know that SAP is changing the Business Objects certification exams to align them with the SAP exams. You can read more about it on this BLOG post by Kenneth Schieffer.

The summary is that there will be only one 3-hour exam for each product line (Crystal Reports, BO Enterprise and Web Intelligence).  Passing the exam now makes you an “SAP Certified Application Associate.  And if you are only partially through the current exam process you have until April to complete the exam under the old scheme. Otherwise you have to start over with the new scheme.

Thanks to Gordon Portanier of Crystalize in Canada for pointing this article out to me.

It appears that SAP will release a new version of Crystal Reports this year.  This isn’t a big surprise given that it has been two years since the last version.  There are no details yet but George Peck mentioned in a recent article that the SAP Users Group might give a preview in the next month or so.   Anyone have any details to share?

And thanks to Gordon Portanier of Crystalize in Canada for giving me the heads up.

If you need to buy an older version of Crystal Reports, all the way back to v8.5, you can now download them directly from BO (for $595).  This link includes all versions from 8.5 forward.

If you want to save a few bucks you can check on Ebay, where I regularly find older versions for sale.  Just make sure you know what you are purchasing.  In 2002 I wrote an article about what to look for when buying CR on Ebay.  That article still applies, although some of the product codes listed might be different in newer versions.

Or check with me.  I sometimes know of extra copies that are available.

There is a link on my library page that explains how to enhance the mapping feature in Crystal reports to include maps by zip code or county.  Unfortunately, adding these features isn’t free.  You have to purchase additional map ‘layers’ for the MapInfo module in CR.  MapInfo is now part of Pitney Bowes.

One of my readers, Robert Meyer, just let me know that he called Pitney Bowes and found that my pricing information was out of date. They used to sell zip codes and county maps one state at a time.  A zip code map for a single state was $395 for one user.  Now you can get a zip code map for all 50 states for $2,250 (still one user).  Not that this is cheap but it is much better than before.   A county map used to be $125 per state per user and it is now $495 for all 50 states.

In addition to the index for my Expert’s series, I have also created 2 PDF indexes that cover my course books. There are two indexes because many students were taught using an older version of the course books with slightly different pagination.  If your Intro book has 50 pages and your Advanced book has 80 pages then use the v12 index. If your Intro book has 49 pages and your Advanced book has 76 pages then use the v11 index.

I just uploaded another updated master topic index that includes two more of my guides. The index now includes all the topics covered by nine of my guides:

Expert Techniques volumes 1 through 4
Subreports, Parameters and Alerts
Formulas
Totals
Crosstabs
SQL Expressions, Options, and Commands

This is available as an HTML page as well as a PDF version that you can download.

I just uploaded an updated master topic index that includes two more of my guides.  The index now includes all the topics covered by seven of my guides:

Expert Techniques volumes 1 through 4
Subreports, Parameters and Alerts
Formulas
Totals

This is available as an HTML page as well as a PDF version that you can download.

There are two types of rounding in Crystal Reports.  I call them ‘real’ rounding and ‘fake’ rounding. Fake rounding is what you do when you use the toolbar button or Format>Field to reduce the number of decimals.  Real rounding is when you write a formula field using the Round() function.  I usually avoid fake rounding because it doesn’t change the underlying values.  So if you total a column that uses fake rounding your total won’t match the visible values in the column.

Last week a tek-tips.com user wrote that fake rounding was using ‘Banker’ rounding which rounds 5 to the nearest even number rather than always rounding up. He asked Continue Reading »
Rounding bug mimics ‘banker’ rounding

I have written several posts regarding Zebra printers and the problems they have had with labels that rotate when they shouldn’t. According to this blog post in the SAP forums, this issue has been fixed in SP2.  I don’t have the printer to test so if any of you who have had this problem can confirm that this is fixed, please let me know.

If you are using any “Text Rotation” in your reports (like with vertical Cross-tab column headings) you will have trouble deploying them to the web using the CR 2008 DHTML viewer.  This is a known bug  which causes the rotated text to revert to horizontal when rendered.  The links provide more information on this topic:

Technical Note 1215907

SAP Forum discussion

Business Objects Forum discussion