Crystal Reports Indexing un-indexed tables

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     I really like CR, but have repeatedly run into a brick wall. The problem is not being able to link un-indexed tables. I would REALLY not like to have to use another report writer if I can help it.

We have a consignment book store that sells both consigned books and educational items, and new books/educational items. About 50 consigned/50% new.

The Point of Sale program that we use does inventory also (naturally) and I use its read-only tables and Crystal to create re-order reports for new items.

This kind of report is something the POS program is sadly lacking, and POS software company's technical support has been little help! 

I am not an experienced IT person. Also not up on SQL.

However, I have been able to find the needed data with Crystal and print some pretty good reports EXCEPT for the one big problem. Some tables are not indexed! 

So for example, if I generate a sales history report, I can pull up item numbers and sale dates and quantities. And while I can link other item tables that contain vendor names and item descriptions to that report, the reports are unusable since they take too long to run because these other tables are not indexed. 

Needless to say, I have had to find work-arounds. Since our volume of inventory is growing and the POS program is changing even the work-arounds are getting too cumbersome. 

My question is how can I solve the indexing problem and create a unified re-order report?

After some looking around, my choices appear to be:

1. Switch to another report writer (don't want to!)

2. Learn to embed SQL commands(?)

3. Transfer the tables to another program and then back to Crystal (?)

This indexing problem appears to be a real hurdle for Crystal and I was wondering if anyone else has had to deal with un-indexed read-only tables and how the problem can be overcome?

I apologize for being wordy. Always willing to learn something new.

Thanks in advance. Jim

Edited by jimmy - 27 Sep 2015 at 2:03pm