Microsoft Offers Combines Features Of Crystal Reports Sql Server
Microsoft SQL server is one of the leading database software used in middle-sized SQL solutions for enterprises. Presently, the server software has been updated to be used for larger applications on Microsoft windows platform. On the other hand, Crystal Reports is one of the most powerful report writing tools in the world. Crystal Reports is being offered by many vendors as their main report writing tool, and one of them being Microsoft, offering the combined features of Crystal Reports SQL Server. The two matches perfectly when you are having solutions developed on Microsoft windows platform.
In using the combination of Crystal Reports SQL Server, the stored procedures of SQL server is supported by Crystal reports, where the procedures are essentially written in SQL. In certain cases, this support greatly depends upon whether your Crystal Reports is connected to the SQL database through its native database drivers or through ODBC. The stored procedures are powerful objects in a SQL database, and they can be used to perform wide variety of tasks, even within one stored procedure. In using Crystal Reports SQL server, the data in the SQL server is used by Crystal Reports, for creation of reports. But there are restrictions which should be noted.
In Crystal Reports SQL server applications, the stored procedure can only be utilised with only one 'select' statement being outputted. Any consequent 'select' statements get ignored. Before initiating the 'select' statement, if Crystal Report encounters an output from the stored procedure, the report writer will attempt to retrieve data from this output, with the result that it will not be able to find the relevant fields that are in the report. For example, if the stored procedure is required to return any messages, before initiation of the 'select' statement, Crystal Reports will fail to display any data, owing to the simple reason, that it cannot find any of the relevant fields in the message as returned by the stored procedure prior to the initiation of the 'select' statement.
Crystal Reports SQL server applications do not allow output parameters to be used in the store procedures. In using variables or functions in the 'select' statement of the stored procedures, these must be assigned with aliases indicating them as fields. It needs to be ensured that the user has the right privileges to execute stored procedures. If not, you may be missing stored procedures from the list, which are relevant for your report creation. When using Crystal Reports SQL server applications, the point to mark is that, Crystal Reports version 9.0 does not have the option for using the native Crystal Reports driver (P2sSQL.dll), and hence the stored procedures from Microsoft SQL Server 7 and 2000 are only supported by Crystal Reports versions 8.0 and 8.5, as far as the Crystal Reports native driver is concerned. As against that, the connectivity between Crystal Reports and the SQL server could be achieved by ODBC or OLE DB by all versions of Crystal Reports. Crystal Reports SQL server applications are an outcome of a long standing relationship of Microsoft with Crystal Reports. This dates back to the era of Visual Basic version 1.0. Presently with the coming of .NET platform and Visual Studio, Crystal Reports has once again set the example of a third-party integration product with Microsoft tools. However, there is a competition for Crystal Reports with the advent of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). The Microsoft products come with an easier license terms, but looking deeply the matter is not that simple. If you want to install SSRS in a stand-alone server, you need to buy licenses for each and every SQL Server for each computer. The reason for this is that SSRS is very resource intensive, and generating reports consumes quite much of the server resources.
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