Crystal Reports Training by Ken Hamady, MS, Reporting and Training Nationwide
The
Crystal Reports Underground News - Volume 2005.05 (May 2005)
an independent source
for Crystal Reports Information by Ken Hamady
Contents
for May, 2005:
** Are independent
training and consulting license violations?
** CDUGNA is no more
** My on-site training classes
** CrystalWizard was gone in v11, but is available again
** Enhanced ODBC export in Visual Cut
** My library of Crystal Reports materials:
Expert's Guide to Formulas
Expert's Guide to
Subreports, Parameters and Alerts
Expert Techniques
Volumes I and II
Quick Reference to
Crystal Reports in Visual Basic
Quick Reference to
Crystal Reports in VB.NET
** More complaints about v11 parameters
** Some tricks I learned from my students
** Read back issues at http://www.kenhamady.com/news.html
Are independent training and
consulting license violations?
(BO's
response and other updates on this topic)
Business Objects
thinks that the wording in the Crystal license gives them the right to
control Crystal Reports training and consulting done by anyone.
You may think that I exaggerate but Crystal is already sending letters
to training organizations that offer public classes. This letter
claims that they are not allowed to use the software to train people
outside their organization, even if they buy a copy of Crystal for
every person they train. When I told the manager of BO's
Education Services that this was a pretty extreme and rare approach to
licensing, she said that they don't mind being "pioneers" in this
area. She told one of my readers that she had not received any
negative feedback on the program from users. The goal of this
article is to change that.
First, I decided to read the license again. The restriction is
based on a phrase that says you can only use the software for your
"internal business purposes". BO says that training someone
outside your business is not an "internal business purpose". So
where does that leave consulting? If I write a report for you, am
I using the software for my internal business purposes? So I
spoke with a sales manager at BO last week and asked them if my
creating reports for a third party was considered using the software
for "internal business purposes".
I was immediately told how much BO valued people like me, adding value
to their product line. He said many nice things but he could NOT
say that my consulting would be considered an "internal business
purpose" by BO. He said he would get clarification and after
about a week he is still trying, which I find very telling in
itself. You might assume that BO would never want to stop
independent consultants from serving their customers. But they
are.
If you have Crystal Enterprise, open the license and scroll down to the
restrictions. It says users may not use the software to provide:
"...training, outsourcing services, or consulting services, or any
other commercial service related to the Software or to develop training
materials;"
I fully expect this wording to be considered for the Crystal XII
license next year, especially the part about training materials.
BO is currently having a hard time convincing publishers that they need
to pay a royalty to use screenshots in Crystal course books. BO
claims that these screenshots are copyright violations, but copyright
law allows fair use of a portion of a copyrighted work. That may
be why BO has only convinced 2 courseware vendors to join their new
"approved" courseware program and pay royalties. I have spoken to
several other vendors that are either ignoring the new license program
or actively challenging it. Based on the price increases of one
"approved" vendor, I estimate that the screenshots fee adds $30 to $40
per book. My guess is that BO reserves the right to increase this
fee down the road, once the hook is set.
So what should we do? If you have read this far it is probably
because you appreciate an independent voice. But, do you think
this newsletter would exist if I had to sign an agreement that says I
will "reflect favorably" on Business Objects? My goal is to get
several hundred people who agree with me to either call or Email their
sales rep and either ask or complain about this new policy. Just
asking them to explain it publicly on their web site would help.
Here are some other thoughts and questions you might want to include,
if you agree:
1) If the program to "approve" courseware is primarily to benefit the
users by "setting quality standards", why didn't they announce this
program to the users? Is it because users might not see the
benefit in paying 50% more while being limited to 2 choices?
2) One of the strengths of Crystal Reports is that you can find truly
independent specialists for both training and consulting. Why is
BO trying to make it impossible to teach a public class while remaining
independent of Business Objects? If they reduce the number of
independent specialists (like me) with an incentive to support the
product, they will reduce the value of the product.
3) Some organizations (maybe yours?) will be more hesitant to upgrade
to v12 once they realize that the may not be able to find truly
independent people who providing training, consulting or course
materials.
If you don't have a sales rep to contact you can Email the Manager of
Educational Services at:
boes@businessobjects.com
Let me know what responses you get. I can summarize them in the
next issue and see if they really address the issues.
CDUGNA is no more:
I never went to one
of the CDUGNA events but it was comforting to know that there was an
independent organization to provide balance. Not anymore.
The loss of CDUGNA is all the more reason to make sure that independent
voices are not lost. The following is a condensed version of the
board's farewell letter:
===============
After serving the Crystal user community for over ten years, CDUGNA
(Crystal Decisions User Group of North America) will cease
operations. Based on the effort to put on another conference,
coupled with the level of support from current sponsors and vendors, we
decided not to hold any more events. However, the CDUGNA web site
at www.cdugna.org will be available until the end of June to allow
users to download presentations from prior year's conferences.
Regional user groups are still a viable option for getting technical
presentations and the ability to network with your fellow users.
In addition, Business Objects puts on an annual conference every
November. Although this conference is run directly by Business Objects
(unlike the independently run CDUGNA annual meeting) there is still
some good Crystal content available and the chance to network with a
large number of users.
Expert on-site training:
My specialty is
teaching Crystal Reports at your office, with your data. And I
charge by day, not by student. So, if you have 4 or more students
you may find the cost of an on-site class less than the cost of sending
the same students to a public class. Even if you have fewer
students you might find the benefits of working with your own data
worth the extra cost.
Do I teach a good class? I have personally taught over 2000
satisfied students, including students at the National Institutes of
Health, the Library of Congress and the Executive Office of the
President. I am also the all-time, top ranked Crystal Reports
expert at Tek-Tips.com. For more information you can call me at
(540) 338-0194.
CrystalWizard was gone in v11, but is
available again:
Some of you who used
the Report Design Component in v9/v10 may have been disappointed when
you upgraded to the RDC in version XI - especially if you use the
Report Creation API calls. Version XI didn't come with the
CrystalWizard.DLL which allows your users to create reports from your
application using a wizard similar to that within Crystal Reports.
Thanks to the efforts of Randy McAtee from RBL Data Systems (and
probably a few others) Business Objects decided to release both this
DLL and its source code as an RDC sample application. You will
find a link to this at the bottom of the LINKS page of my web site.
More good news in XI is that you no longer have to purchase the
Advanced Developers Edition for each customer who uses the RCAPI
calls. Now a regular Developer's Edition will allow your users to
access these calls. There is no "Advanced" Developer in version
XI.
Enhanced ODBC export in Visual Cut:
Crystal Reports
allows you to export a report's output to any ODBC connection and
create a new table in your database. But Crystal doesn't allow
you to append records to an existing table or overwrite an existing
table. Millet Software has just added these features to Visual
Cut. And because Visual Cut can schedule reports, you can
schedule one report to overwrite a table, and then schedule a 2nd
report that reads that table. This allows you to get around some
limitations of 2-pass reporting like sorting on a ratio formula that
divides one subtotal by another. To read about this and other
features of Visual Cut, see the LINKS page of my web site.
My library of Crystal Reports
materials:
http:/www.kenhamady.com/tools.html
Expert's Guide to Formulas ($36)
Expert's Guide to Subreports, Parameters and Alerts ($28)
Expert Techniques Vol. I ($19)
Expert Techniques Vol. II ($19)
Quick Reference to Crystal Reports in Visual Basic ($16)
Quick Reference to Crystal Reports in .NET ($14)
More complaints about v11 parameters:
I just rewrote my
advanced course material to cover the new dynamic parameters in
XI. While they are an improvement in some areas, there are some
serious limitations that you should understand. For instance
dynamic parameters:
1) Are limited to 1000 values unless you add a
registry key. See BO tech article c2017238.
2) Don't allow user entered values. Users have
to pick a value from generated list.
3) Can't have a preset default like "ALL", without
writing it into a SQL command.
Also note that the Edit Mask option in XI is much less helpful than it
was in older versions. In v10 the fixed characters of the Edit
Mask are visible in the entry box before the user enters their
value. The user can only enter valid characters within the fixed
characters so the format is easy to match. In XI the user sees
the actual mask at the top of window. They are expected to type
in all of the fixed characters, in the correct positions, but nothing
stops them from doing it wrong. After they click OK it compares
their entry against the mask and then complains if it is wrong.
A few tricks I learned from my
students this month:
1) Context Help in
the formula editor
Staring with v10 you can highlight any function in the
list and hit the F1 key
to go directly to the help page for that function.
2) Auto-fill in the formula editor
Starting with v9 you can type part of a function name and
then click Ctrl-Space to
bring up a list of all functions that start with the
characters you typed.
3) Cancel a drag by hitting escape.
If you are dragging an object to move it and you want to
cancel that move
and put the object back where it was, you can simply hit
the escape key
before you release your mouse button. The object
goes back to where it was.
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 2005 by Ken Hamady
All rights reserved -
Republishing
this material requires written permission