resurrecting Crystal Reports- a newbie
Printed From: Crystal Reports Book — Forum Name: Talk with the Author
Posted By: n. scott — 11 Jul 2007 at 8:47am
The consulting job I am currently involved with wants me to resurrect their Crystal Reports to provide analysis of inventory, production utilization, purschaing and sales. No one, in the facility has ever run the software. Here are my questions:
- what do I need to ask about the current software that they utilize?
- is there off the shelf software that CR is not compatible with?
- where do I start? I have never worked with CR
- what resources ( books, training, etc) do you recommend?
- what should I be charging for THIS kind of consulting?
Posted By: hilfy — 11 Jul 2007 at 12:10pm
What do you mean by "resurrect"? Do they have existing reports in Crystal that they've never used?
You'll need to know what type of database the software is using and have some way of determining where data is located. Proprietary databases (i.e., specific to the software and not used for any other purpose) probably won't have a way for Crystal to connect. If you can connect but the data is in fields that are binary or encrypted or where the table and field names don't reflect the data that's in them, you'll have a much harder time creating reports.
A good starting point is Brian's book - there are free chapters available on this site or the whole book is available through Amazon or other online book-sellers. There is also good training available through Business Objects ( www.businessobjects.com).
-Dell
Posted By: n. scott — 11 Jul 2007 at 1:02pm
They previously had the software, may still have it, but no one is left that can run it. Which book are you referring to? There appears to be more than one. I downloaded a chapter from Crystal reports XI, designer 1 workshop. Please point me in the right direction. I also noticed a 4 cd training video by Jason Manibog. Any reviews? Any other recommendations?
If they have a previous copy of CR, can it be upgraded? My guess it is at least 5 years since it was used. The data bases that currently exist are , I believe, off the shelf software named TIW and SBT. They also had a previous data base named Everest.
Thanks for your help so far.
Posted By: hilfy — 11 Jul 2007 at 1:12pm
By book, I mean Brian Bischoff's Crystal Reports books. Chapters from the XI version are available online on this site. Click on the "Home" link at the top of your screen.
Upgrading CR at this point probable means buying a new copy. There have been MANY changes in the software in the last 5 years, and you'll probably want to use the latest version.
I'm not familiar with the software you mention. Without know what the database back-end it uses, I can't tell you if it's compatible or not. As for Everest, I'm not familiar with that either. I doubt if Crystal has a native driver for it, so you would probably be stuck using ODBC (which has some problems...) or OleDB if it's available.
-Dell
Posted By: jkwrpc — 12 Jul 2007 at 1:27pm
You have been given good advice about Brian's book.
However concerning Everest, there does seem to be information concerning this product when I tried an internet search. I dont know if will lead you to an odbc driver...but might be worth the effort.
Regards,
John W.
Posted By: jkwrpc — 12 Jul 2007 at 1:34pm
Just to update, I did a quick read of a couple of the sites concerning Everest. It is a bit confusing, but I think trying to use a MS SQL Server driver or a MySQL driver to connect may be worthwhile.
Regards,
John W.
Posted By: Mike Bone — 26 Jul 2007 at 1:00am
Hi there
If you have access to Everest, have you tried to get Everest to export the data into another readable, (Comma delimited for instance) ?
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