A user in one of my LinkedIn groups had an unusual requirement.  He needed to eliminate trailing zeros from a series of decimal numbers.  The numbers could go out to 4 or more decimal places and he didn’t want to show any trailing zeros.  He wanted a column to look like this:

1.2345
2.345
3.45
4.3

instead of this

1.2345
2.3450
3.4500
4.3000

There are other approaches but I think this is the simplest. Just put your field in the Continue Reading »
Eliminating trailing zeros in decimal numbers

I was helping a user implement my formula for calculating the most recent business date. He wanted to use the most recent business date before today as the starting point for his date filter. We were able to calculate the correct date and use it in the selection formula correctly, but I noticed that the date criteria wasn’t passing to the SQL. This was affecting the performance of the report.

I tried starting the formula with “BeforeReadingRecords” since it didn’t need any field values from the database. But then it couldn’t see the holidays formula which stores the list of holidays in a second separate formula.  I had trouble assigning both formulas to BeforeReadingRecords and still have one formula reference the other. Then I realized that I could combine them into one formula by putting the holiday array at the beginning of the business dates formula. As soon as did that I could assign the combined formula to be BeforeReadingRecords, and then the value was passed successfully to the WHERE clause.

So I had to think back about why I originally wrote the two formulas separately.  I think in general I thought it was more efficient to have the holiday array done once in the report header. That way I could use it in several different business date formulas and Crystal wouldn’t have to recreate the holiday list on every record as it did the business date calculation. But in this case I found that it was more efficient to move the holidays than it was to have the database return all dates.

I had to track down some older versions of Crystal Reports along with service packs and runtime modules. I found some useful links and want to put them all in one place so that I don’t have to hunt them down again.  Others might find this useful so I have posted them below.

Of course, the problem with pages like these is that they don’t age well. These links will probably expire or change. Some of the downloads will go away as SAP stops supporting the older versions. So that is why some of the links below are redundant. If you find that a link has expired, please let me know.

Version downloads and service packs (SAP)

Version downloads and service packs

CR XI downloads and service packs

Find It EZ has just released version 14 of their code search software. It is now called Code Search Pro Desktop 2014. The new features for Crystal users include the ability to go through a batch of reports and:

• Verify the database
• Change the data source
• Set the table alias names
• Create a database cross reference report

Also, the tool now creates an index of scanned documents which makes searches faster.  And it is certified to support  SQL Server 2014, Oracle 12c, MySQL 5.7 and DB2 10.5.  See the Find It EZ website for a free 14-day trial.  Or you can use the new option of Code Search Pro in a Saas model.  This allows you to use it fully for 90 days, with unlimited support, for $99.