Archive for August, 2012



Named User Licensing in CR 2011

Tuesday 21 August 2012 @ 2:31 pm

A colleague in LinkedIn was concerned about the wording in the CR 2011 license.  He had read my article on NULs (Named User Licenses) and it wasn’t clear if this was still applicable to CR 2011.  I read the license and figured it was worth clarifying again, so I sent the following message to sales at SAP:

What I am looking for is a copy of the EULA (the license agreement).  I want to see for myself if the NUL license model has changed before I tell my customers and readers whether or not upgrade.

You see in CR XI and CR 2008 a user is allowed to install a single copy of CR on several machines as long as only the “Named User” is using the product in all places.  This was confirmed by the product team in an Email to me several years ago.  However this week another user said that the CR 2011 license is restricted to a “single install” rather than a Named User, and I found that surprising.  I want to read the current license for CR 2011 to see for myself if this has been changed.  Can you send me a copy?

Here is the response that I received: Continue Reading »
Named User Licensing in CR 2011




Report processing flow chart dropped from the CR help file?

Tuesday 14 August 2012 @ 10:40 pm

I was teaching a lesson today about variables and evaluation times for a remote student.  One of the things I like to use during this lesson is a diagram from the CR help file.  It is called the “Multi-pass reporting flow chart” and is found at the end of the section called the “Report Processing Model”.    The diagram shows the specific steps that a report goes through from beginning to end, and which steps are considered part of each evaluation time.

So I was surprised to find that the diagram was not listed in its usual place in the help file contents.  I didn’t spend much time looking for it, since I couldn’t imagine that there was a more appropriate place.  I figured that the diagram was dropped from CR 2011.  It may be that it has been moved, but just in case, I decided to post it on my website.  That way if I am teaching a class on-site and I don’t have it I can still use it in class.

I won’t be able to check it here because after evaluating CR 2011 I decided to hold off on the upgrade.  There are so few changes that I didn’t feel it was urgent.    So if someone out there is using CR 2011 and finds this diagram somewhere in the help file, I won’t mind being proven wrong.




Using Visual Cut to turn Email messages into useable data

Monday 13 August 2012 @ 12:41 pm

Millet software has added an interesting feature to Visual Cut. Visual Cut has always had the ability to send out Emails from a Crystal Report.  Now it can collect incoming Emails from an Email server and use them to build a database table from the incoming messages. These tables can be created in MS Access, Oracle or SQL Server and can be used to update existing data or to create new reports.  The table structure has 20+ fields which means plenty of detail for analysis.  Here are two examples of how this could be used: Continue Reading »
Using Visual Cut to turn Email messages into useable data




Display strings and null values

Sunday 5 August 2012 @ 4:05 pm

I read a forum discussion where someone was asking how they could have all the null values on the report print ‘n/a’. They were faced with having to write a formula field for every field on the report. I suggested that they could use the Display String property that is available when you format a field. The Display String allows you to override the value that will print on the report. The advantage is that you can use the function CurrentFieldValue within the condition formula and this makes it easy to apply to lots of fields at once.  I suggested that they use a Display String formula that was something like this:

If CurrentFieldValue = ”
then ‘n/a’
else CurrentFieldValue

My plan was Continue Reading »
Display strings and null values





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