Crystal Reports Training by Ken Hamady, MS, Reporting and Training Nationwide
The
Crystal Reports Underground News - Volume 2005.09 (Sep 2005)
an independent source
for Crystal Reports Information by Ken Hamady
Contents
for September, 2005:
** Crystal Reports Plug-In for
Eclipse
** Expert Crystal Reports Training
** BO Loses Patent Lawsuit against Microstrategy
** Updates on the "Don't Pay Twice" campaign:
** BO Conference in November
** My Library of Crystal Reports Guides
** Using Formulas that rely on Subtotals in your Cross-tabs
** Chart on a Parameter Value
** Read back issues at <http://www.kenhamady.com/news.html>
Crystal Reports Plug-In for Eclipse:
Have you heard of Eclipse. I
hadn't until a week or so ago and yet one estimate says that one third
of all Java developers are using Eclipse. Now I hear that both
Business Objects and Actuate plan to offer reporting support for
Eclipse. Expect to hear more about it in the future.
Reporting is currently the weak area in the open-source environment.
Eclipse is, roughly speaking, the open-source equivalent of Microsoft
Visual Studio. Programmers use Eclipse to create Java based
applications. The Eclipse workspace or "Workbench" is made up of
tools called "plug-ins" that assist the programmer in completing common
programming tasks. The Eclipse plug-ins are Java programs
designed to connect to other plug-ins within the Eclipse
framework. And, like an extension cord, most are designed so that
other plug-ins can be added to extend them further.
Because Eclipse is open source, plug-ins are being written by other
Eclipse users. Some simply contribute there plug-ins to the
Eclipse framework. Others write plug-ins and sell them as
commercial applications. The only requirement is that they fit
the plug-in model that Eclipse uses.
Actuate went so far as to join the board of the Eclipse Foundation and
then suggested an open-source, Java based reporting tool. They
even dedicated several engineers to the project. The resulting
product is called "Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools" or
BIRT. Actuate sells support services for BIRT and hopes to create
commercial products that work with BIRT. With Actuate's support
and contributions from the Open Source community, you may see BIRT take
off.
So now Crystal wants to be represented in the Eclipse framework as
well. They are working on a plug-in that will allow Eclipse
applications to integrate with Crystal Reports. However this
plug-ins will not be open source. It will be sold as a commercial
product, at least for now. If BIRT matures and becomes popular it
might provide another challenge to Crystal's dominance of the
market. See the Library page on my web site for a list of good
articles on BIRT.
Expert On-site Training / November
Classes in Frederick:
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
worthwhile.
If you only have one or two students you can come to my public classes
in Frederick, MD. See the "Public Classes" page above for dates
and details.
How good are my classes? I have personally taught over 2,000
satisfied students. Here are some comments from students in
September:
"Excellent communication skills! Superb teacher!" -
(Library of Congress)
"Great presentation of very complex information" - (IBM)
For more information you can call me at (540) 338-0194.
BO Loses Patent Lawsuit against
Microstrategy:
I have seen a troubling trend
developing among large technology companies. They have started to
file patents for intangible "business methods" for things that are
already common and obvious practices. If a company is awarded one
of these patents it then looks for others who are using their
"patented" method and asks them to pay a fee. The hope is that
they will pay rather than challenge the patent in court. A few
initial settlements from companies who can't afford to fight often
lends credibility to their patent. It also gives them more
resources with which to defend the patent.
BO was granted a patents several years ago for using "semantically
dynamic objects" to query a database. Now I am not a patent
lawyer but this sounds broad enough to cover just about any metadata
layer. BO then sued Cognos, Brio and Microstrategy for patent
infringement. Brio settled first for 10 Million and Cognos
settled shortly after for $24 million. Cognos claimed, even after
settlement, that the patent was invalid. And yet they settled
because $24 million was worth less than the costs and risks of a legal
challenge. That amazes me.
Of the three only Microstrategy decided to fight the patent suit in
court. They just won the battle this summer as BO's last claim
was dismissed. Microstrategy is now countersuing BO for patent
infringement and a few other items. Hopefully this will inspire
other companies to fight, and these patents will become less
profitable.
Updates on the "Don't Pay Twice"
campaign:
If you are a new reader you may be
unaware of my campaign. My primary goal is to educate users on
BO's attempt to scare people into paying money for permission to do
things they are already allowed to do for free. You can read the
detail on the link below.
But my secondary goal is to get users to communicate with BO.
Otherwise I expect the version 12 license to limit your choices and
resources even further. Any comments, questions, complaints will
let them know that users are paying attention. Even if you only
own one license of Crystal. Here is what we have accomplished so
far:
1) Business Objects has been forced to clarify, in writing, that the
Crystal EULA doesn't really forbid using the software to teach a public
class. They have yet to clarify the contradiction between Dan
Klein's letter and their more recent statements.
2) Discussions have sprouted in the regional user groups, and I am told
this topic will also come up at the national conference in
November. Even the Keynote speakers of the conference are now
aware of the issue.
3) Users are now paying more attention to Crystal's fine print.
That is important because BO is already working on the next version of
Crystal. I am sure that some of BO's management team want to
simply use the restrictions currently in the Enterprise license.
That would make all independent consulting and training a violation of
the license. You should let them know if you think that is a bad
idea.
For details on this topic see:
<http://www.kenhamady.com/licensingissues.html>
Business Objects conference in
November:
I was tempted to go this year just
to stir things up a bit, but my wife's due date is within a week of the
conference and I am going to be staying close to home. Those of
you who are attending can see the list of breakout sessions here:
http://www.businessobjectsevents.com/userconference05/controller.cfm?view=content.tracks
<http://www.businessobjectsevents.com/userconference05/controller.cfm>
Last month I mentioned that the conference would be light on Crystal
content and that some popular CDUGNA speakers weren't included.
Last week I heard that Ido Millet (creator of Data Link Viewer and
Visual Cut) has been asked to do his session on "Advanced Reporting
Insights and Techniques". Ido has presented at CDUGNA and always
has very popular sessions. This is good news for Crystal users
who attend the conference.
My complete Library of Crystal Reports
Materials:
Have a special area of Crystal
explained to you by a master teacher:
Expert's Guide to Formulas ($36)
Expert's Guide to Subreports, Parameters and Alerts ($28)
Expert's Guide to Totals ($24)
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)
http:/www.kenhamady.com/tools.html
Using Formulas that rely on Subtotals
in your Cross-tabs:
When you have done something for a
long time you start to take things for granted. Recently I was
helping someone with a report in XI and it used a cross-tab. One
of the cross-tab fields was a formula and I was surprised to find a
subtotal inside the formula. Historically, you couldn't use a
formula in a cross-tab, if that formula included any totals.
Apparently this was not true in XI. So I started testing previous
versions and discovered that this became available all the way back in
version 9. You still can't do a summary of this field on the
report but you CAN do the summary inside a cross-tab. So take the
following formula using the Extreme database:
Maximum ({Orders.Order Date}, {Customer.Customer Name}) -
Minimum ({Orders.Order Date}, {Customer.Customer Name})
It calculates the time period between the first and last order for each
customer. If I wanted to find the 5 longest periods I could not
apply a TopN on the groups. I could, however, use a cross-tab to
do the TopN. The steps would be:
1) Create the formula
2) Add a cross-tab with the row by Customer and the
formula as the summarized field.
3) Change the summary to Maximum.
4) Apply the TopN to the cross-tab (not to the groups).
These formulas are also available for charts, even back in v8.5.
Since a Chart can also do it's own TopN, we can find the Top 5 periods
using a chart in v8.5, but not with a Cross-tab.
Chart on a parameter value:
Did you know that your users can
manually enter a parameter value that then becomes a bar or slice in a
chart? For instance, you want to add a bar chart that compares a
grand total of the report to another number that isn't in your
database. You could create a parameter and then enter that number
manually at runtime. All you need to do is to write a formula
that uses the parameter. In CRv9 and later you can simply use the
parameter as the entire formula like this:
{?InventoryValue}
But in versions prior to v9 you would have to add the evaluation time
like this:
WhileReadingRecords;
{?InventoryValue}
You can now use this formula in the chart expert.
Two cautions on this technique. The chart will most likely need
to be an "Advanced" Chart since Group charts can only use Group
values. Also, note that the Chart Expert may try to do a Sum of
of your formula which would greatly inflate the value. Using
Maximum instead of Sum means the chart will not inflate the value.
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
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