Crystal Reports Training by Ken Hamady, MS, Reporting and Training Nationwide
The
Crystal Reports Underground News - Volume 2003.03 (March 2003)
an independent source
for Crystal Reports Information by Ken Hamady
Contents for March, 2003:
** My list of 3rd Party Products for Crystal Reports
** Folder and Row level security for Crystal Enterprise Standard
** Row Level Security for Crystal Enterprise Professional
** Expert Training in Leesburg, Philadelphia and Baltimore
** Crystal Enterprise Prices
** Expert On-Site Training and Consulting
** February Case Study Follow Up - CE9 RAS Advanced Edition
** The Expert's Guide to Crystal Reports Formulas
** Using Currency Symbol Codes in your Reports
** My Quick Reference to Crystal Reports in Visual Basic
** Read back issues at http://www.kenhamady.com/news.html
My list of 3rd Party Add-On Products for Crystal Reports:
The
market
for 3rd party Crystal products is growing quickly. Many of you
have
visited the LINKS page on my web site, where I list roughly 40 products
that
add value to Crystal Reports. I am confident that it is the most
comprehensive
list available. Why? Because, I don't sell any of these
products,
and I even list products that are sold by my competitors. Crystal
decisions
is the LAST place to look for this list. I will let you figure
out why.
http://www.kenhamady.com/bookmarks.html
So, if you have or are developing a third party product to work with
Crystal
Reports, or have discovered one that I am not listing, drop me a line
and
let me know. Or if you have a good/bad experience with any of
these
products, I would be interested in hearing from you. Just this
month
I have added 3 new products that all work with Crystal Enterprise - a
relatively
new area for 3rd party products. All three are discussed below
and are
geared to enhancing Crystal Enterprise security.
Folder and Row level security for Crystal Enterprise Standard:
Crystal
Enterprise Standard does not come with any security for reports.
To
get user or group level security features you have had to create your
own
secured front end program or upgrade to Crystal Enterprise Professional
Edition.
Upgrading to Professional is very expensive (see the article below for
prices).
And, not everyone has the ability to develop their own front end
program.
But now there are 2 new products that fill this gap:
ReportSheild:
ReportSheild, by ClearCut, provides a low cost folder level security
system
that is designed to work with the folder system of Crystal Enterprise
Standard.
You decide which users have access to each folder and the user will
only see
folders to which they have been granted rights. You do NOT have
Report
level, Row level or Group level security features, but it only costs
$399.
It works with ePortfolio or you can use one of the the three 'skins'
that
come with the product. However, the skins don't provide features
like
scheduling or instances. It is currently available for the
Standard
Editions of CEv8 and CEv8.5. It will soon be available for CEv9
(RAS
Edition and Standard Edition).
http://www.kenhamady.com/bookmarks.html#Web
ICB Reports:
ICB Reports, by ICB Consulting provides folder level security but also
allows
you to implement row-level security. This means that different
users
can run the same report, but each will see only the records that they
have
permission to see. This is managed in a "permissions" database
where
you can define the selection criteria to be applied to groups of users,
called
"roles". You can assign one user or many users to each
role. You
can set up the database to recognize users by their existing Windows
2000/NT
user accounts or you can create User Names/Passwords within ICB Reports
itself.
ICB Reports comes with it's own web portal front end (similar to
ePortfolio).
Since this portal does not include scheduling or instances you have to
choose
between publishing the report using ICB Reports (with security) or
publishing
the report using ePortfolio (with scheduling). ICB is currently
working
to incorporate the scheduling feature into their product.
ICB is currently available for the Standard Editions of CEv8 and CEv8.5
and
is also available for the RAS Edition of CEv9. It is currently
being
tested for CEv9 Standard Edition. The cost for one server
is $2,000
and a site license is $8000.
http://www.kenhamady.com/bookmarks.html#Web
Row Level Security for Crystal Enterprise Professional:
APOS
View Time Security:
The APOS group was the first company to provide add-on products for
Crystal
Enterprise. They currently offer a product called View Time
Security
that allows you to implement row level security when running a report,
scheduling
a report or viewing a saved report instance. It also includes an
optional
logging feature that writes a record to an activity log table every
time a
report is run, viewed, or scheduled.
View Time Security shares the security database with Crystal Enterprise
so
it will only work with Crystal Enterprise Professional Edition.
An included
object manager allows you to make bulk changes to the permissions
database.
It is available for CEv8.5 and CEv9. The cost for one server is
$2,500.
A site license is $25,000.
http://www.kenhamady.com/bookmarks.html#Web
Don't just take a Crystal class, learn from a Expert:
I
have
scheduled another round of public classes in:
Leesburg, VA
Baltimore, MD
Philadelphia, PA
Each class is $675 per student, and includes support after the class.
Dates, course outlines and registration info are on my website at:
http://www.kenhamady.com/public.html
Or, call for more information at (540) 338-0194.
Crystal Enterprise Prices:
As
an
update to last months newsletter, I can now provide the prices for
Crystal
Enterprise Professional. Plan on spending at least $20,000 just
to get
started. Each named user is $695, each concurrent is $3,495, and
an
unlimited processor license is $55,000. The minimum purchase is
25
named users or 5 concurrent users. Add 20% for annual maintenance
which
is required in the first year. Educational and Government prices
should
be about 10% to 25% below these prices.
Expert On-Site Training or Consulting:
I
have
personally taught 1500 satisfied students in more than 30 states.
Training
with your data is my specialty, and I charge about half of the "List
Price"
for Crystal Training.
Do I know my stuff? Check out the Crystal Reports Forum at
Tek-Tips.com
and you will find me listed as the top Crystal Reports expert out of
over
23,000 members:
http://www.tek-tips.com/gthreadminder.cfm/lev2/4/lev3/100/pid/149
Can I teach? Many students have said that my classes are among
the best
technical classes they have taken. Ask to speak to a recent
customer
as a reference. Call for more information at (540) 338-0194.
Follow-Up on February Case Study - CE9 RAS Advanced Edition:
Last
month
I mentioned a problem with the RAS Advanced Edition, as experienced by
one
of my readers. He was getting rejected request errors. We
thought
that this had to do with a failure of the queueing and caching feature
of
RAS Advanced. What we discovered was another, lesser known
limitation
on the number of 'report handles' that can be open. The
documentation
on this area is still weak, but here is how I understand it.
Please
let me know if your experience doesn't match up with what I am
describing.
First, some terminology:
Request - Any click by the user that goes to the Report Server.
Gates - my own term, the three slots that can process report requests.
Report Handle - a single report's data, cached in memory.
The RAS Edition allows you to process 3 simultaneous reports requests,
or
the 3 gates as I call them. When a user first runs a report, his
request
occupies one of the 3 available gates. The report's data is
retrieved
and stored in memory, identified by a report handle. Once the
user has
page 1 of the report, the gate is released and is available for another
request
- but the report handle stays active so that the user can request the
next
page without starting over.
Each time a user changes pages, he temporarily occupies one gate while
the
request is processed. Once that page is displayed in his browser,
the
gate is released again. The report handle persists throughout the
process.
The RAS Edition has only 3 gates, but it can have up to 100 open report
handles.
This allows more than three users to view reports simultaneously, as
long
as their requests are not simultaneous. With the Advanced
edition, when
the 3 gates are occupied, users should be queued up to wait for an open
gate.
Although the Gates are released immediately, the handles are not.
They
persist until they time out or until they are explicitly closed.
If
you are using IIS Sessions, the ASP page called Cleanup.asp closes both
the
IIS Session and the report handle. The reader, apparently, was
using
sessions, but not using Cleanup.asp, and was eventually running out of
report
handles, which gave him the error.
One other note about using IIS Sessions. Last month I pointed to
the
"Release Notes" which say that reports with subreports will NOT be
cached.
This would mean that every page change would cause the entire report to
be
refreshed and rerun from scratch. However, I have since learned
that
IIS sessions somehow maintain the report in memory without the
cache.
So, if you are using sessions, reports with subreports will not be
refreshed
with every page change. Not exactly the same as report caching,
but
seems to accomplish the same thing.
The Expert's Guide to Crystal Reports Formulas:
Learn
to write and understand formulas like a Pro, with "The Expert's Guide
to Crystal
Reports Formulas". I take you from the basics all the way through
variables,
arrays and looping logic. I explain HOW, WHY and WHEN to use
these
techniques and provide tips and tricks that are rarely taught in
classes.
The guide includes 28 annotated reports and 45 no-nonsense pages of
detailed
explanations. The cost is only $36 and you can usually have it
within
an hour. For more details, visit my website at:
http://www.kenhamady.com/form00.html
Currency Symbol Codes:
Some
of
you might not have realized that several common currency symbols can be
used
to format numeric or currency fields, or even used in formulas.
While
the dollar sign is on the keyboard, several others are built into most
fonts.
The following are some examples:
Euro
chr(0128)
or ALT-0128
Pounds chr(0163)
or ALT-0163
Yen
chr(0165) or ALT-0165
To have the character appear as part of any string formula, place the
following
format into the formula, treating it as a character string.
chr(0128)
If you are formatting a currency field and want to type the character
itself
into the currency symbol box, you hold down your ALT key while you type
the
4 numbers listed above. The symbol will appear when you release
the
ALT key. Make sure you use the numeric keypad, and not the
numbers at
the top of the keyboard. You can also use this technique to
type
the symbol into any text object or even in your word processor.
VB Quick Reference Guide,
updated
for v9:
If
you
use Crystal Reports in VB applications, you should get my Quick
Reference
Guide. It gives an overview of the different integration methods,
syntax
examples for the most common commands and troubleshooting tips.
It also
comes with source code examples including a simple report viewer.
It
is only $16 and you can usually have it within an hour. Follow
the link
below for more details:
http://www.kenhamady.com/vbref.html
Removal
instructions:
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Reports. If I am mistaken, or if you don't wish to receive the
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Contact Information
Ken Hamady, MS
525K East Market St. PMB 299
Leesburg, VA 20176
(540) 338-0194
ken@kenhamady.com
http://www.kenhamady.com
Copyright 2003 by Ken Hamady
All rights reserved - Republishing this material requires written
permission