Archive for January, 2010
Last week a customer called me after they did an upgrade of PeachTree Accounting. It seems that the records in the report that used to sort were now appearing in random order. As soon as I added the sort back in and refreshed the report, all the records disappeared. Fortunately I had seen this before because I work quite a bit with PeachTree and PeachTree uses Btrieve as a database engine.
This week I had another Btrieve customer (not PeachTree) who wanted to add a parameter to select a part number. We added the rule in the selection formula and, again, all the records disappeared. Same problem same solution.
Apparently when Crystal sends a query to a Btrieve engine, Btrieve tries to ‘help out’ by Continue Reading »
Vanishing data in Btrieve
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.
There are many ways to deploy Crystal Reports to users. I normally lean toward the simpler and less expensive options, like locally installed viewers. But there are environments where a server based option is necessary. The ‘official’ options from SAP are Crystal Reports Server and BO Enterprise. You can read about these on the SAP website under the heading “SAP Business Objects portfolio”. But there are other products out there that most users never see. These are third party products that also allow you to centrally manage your report deployment from your server. The products vary widely and are aimed at several different markets. This page offers a brief rundown on what the products do. I have also posted a feature matrix (PDF) that shows some of the specifics for comparison, including prices. If you have tried one of these products, or are currently using one, I would love to ask you a few questions – on or off the record.
I have come to depend on Crystal’s Guidelines for aligning objects. I find them much more useful then the “Snap to Grid” feature, although I do use both from time to time. But there are often cases where the object needs to be somewhere in between. It can be frustrating to try and position an object while it jumps up or down because it is trying to snap to a grid point or a guideline.
If you run into this problem there is a handy solution. Hold down the “ALT” key while you are moving or sizing the object. The “ALT” key temporarily turns off both snap to grid and guidelines, without making any permanent changes to your settings.