I have used Crystal Reports with Xbase (Dbase/Foxpro/Clipper) files for years, primarily with Goldmine. Goldmine is a contact manager and stores files in DBF format. With just about every Crystal upgrade I have had to change the way I make the connection to the DBF files. So I was surprised a few months back when CR 2008 (version 12) cleanly ran all of my internal reports with no changes. It even ran them a little faster.

That all changed this month when Business Objects released their first service pack, SP zero, for CR 2008. Now every report I have that reads my DBF files will have to have a ‘Set Location’ done. I was using the Xbase connection option for Xbase data. Now if I use that option I get a “Database Connection Error:” which is followed by a string of Asian characters (Korean?) which I am sure were intended to shed light on the error. I am able to successfully connect to these same tables using the DAO driver for Dbase (found under the Access/Excel node).

So those of you who have been or are considering using CR12 for Xbase data, make sure you are prepared to use the DAO connector. There is even one advantage to the DAO connector. Because it uses SQL to communicate to the database I can now use SQL Expressions and commands with my data.

If anyone else is using CR 2008 and has had trouble with the recent Service Pack, let me know.