Sharing Crystal Reports functions without Crystal Reports Server?

Question

We have several reports that perform the same formatting operations (for example, displaying "PASS" or "FAIL" if the value is in a certain range.)

Without Crystal Reports Server, is there a way to exchange features between reports so I don’t need to duplicate them? I understand that I can do this with a library of user-defined functions, but I would prefer not to port all the functions of the crystal to UFL.

Using Crystal Reports 2008.

Answer 1

The only other option that I know is to transfer functions to stored procedures or database functions. This is actually the best implementation (in general) since Crystal Reports client report processing is much slower than SQL Server. therefore, your pass or failure will become a function or stored procedure, or even using case statuses in Select Query.

A good rule of thumb with crystal reports is to smooth the dataset as much as possible before returning the dataset to Crystal. This will allow you to use the power of the database server before relying on the client to handle processing. An ideal example is to return 1 million lines to the client, but smooth it to display only the results from 5 groups. A crystal will suppress a 1 million row sample before it can process the totals.

Answer 2

I remember that an earlier version of CR supports the concept of a common repository in addition to the repository available through BusinessObjects (nee Crystal Solutions) Enterprise.

I did not find mention of such functionality (which means a generic, non-BOE repository) in the XI + version.