A recent change to the process of getting BOCP certifications has caused some confusion among users.  It appears that you now need an SAP User ID before you can register for any certification exams on BO products.  Everyone knows that I am not a big proponent of the BO certification process, but if you do decide to register for an exam, say through the Pearson Vue site, you will now need an SAP ID to do so.

If your company has a support contract you may already have an SAP ID.  If not, you can get one from SAP Central Registration by calling (888) 777-1727.

If anyone has more information to add on this change please let me know.  And thanks to Gordon Portanier of Crystalize in Toronto for tipping me off to the change.

IT World Canada just published an article on the games that SAP/BO is playing with the proposed new CR license terms.  The article includes some history and feedback from instructors, analysts and publishers.  I found it interesting and learned a few things.

According to Blair Wheadon of SAP there is a significant incompatibility between CR 2008 SP0 and CR 2008 SP1.  So much so that they do not recommend that the two Service Packs be installed together.  The document explains which environments should be installing which service packs, and what to do if you have accidentally installed both.

The problems seem to affect primarily application developers and those using SAP server level products like CR Server and BO Enterprise.  Service pack 1 has been pulled off the site and will be released again (or ‘refreshed’) with some fixes.  However the planned fix doesn’t seem to address the incompatibility.  It will simply check your environment and prevent you from installing SP1 if there is an incompatible product, like SP0, installed.

And for those of you who aren’t sure which SPs (if any) are installed in your PC, there is a link that lists the version numbers for each service pack in an earlier post.

I recently had a project where we aligned the columns of one cross-tab with the columns of a similar cross-tab in a subreport. Both cross-tabs always had the exact same columns.  This worked fine as long as the cross-tabs fit horizontally on one page.  But when the cross-tabs had too many columns for one page the main report’s cross-tab would spill over onto the ‘horizontal pages’ that Crystal will generate for wide cross-tabs.  The cross-tab in the subreport would not spill over, but would truncate at the edge of the page.

After some experimenting I stumbled onto the simple solution.   I made the subreport Continue Reading »
Showing wide cross-tabs in a subreport