Can’t remember that Connection String?

Posted on 02/21/2011 by

Funny how you can do something time and time again only to realize (once you take some time away from it) how easily it can be forgotten.  This happened the other day on of all things setting up a connection string to a SQL database. For some time I had been only working with in memory collections that I wasn’t connecting to or using an external data source. When it came time to create that connection I found myself sitting there staring at the screen!  

After a quick search I stumbled upon a great website doFactory. While I am not endorsing the site I did find a number of useful tools on the site… one specifically was a page dedicated to nothing but the syntax for various connection strings… http://www.dofactory.com/Connect/Connect.aspx

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Sharing crystal report files outside of Crystal

Posted on 02/08/2011 by

One of the most common questions I get asked when training / consulting clients on Crystal Reports is. “Can I share my report with others so that they can run the report?” In the past I have always pointed them to a few options. Export the report as a PDF or Excel file, Share the report with the Crystal report Viewer, or for the larger clients use Crystal Enterprise  to share the report. All three solutions while viable have their limitations. Exporting looses drill down features or the ability to refresh the data. The CR Viewer while it supports drill down does not support the refreshing of data. Then there is Crystal Enterprise… well we’ll just leave it at that ( Maybe it should be Enterpri$$e).

Well I am happy to say that in reading a recent newsletter from ( a personally respected and favorite resource) Ken Hamady http://kenhamady.com/cru/ I saw mention of a third-party viewer which supports the refreshing of data / parameters within the Viewer.  The viewer mentioned is the Data Link Viewer.  Which allows users to run reports without having the ability to open the RPT files in the designer.  I found this was a great and much welcome feature as the DLV also  the report by creating in essence a read only file which protects proprietary business calculations, as well as prevents unwanted tampering of the report.

More info on the DLV and other cool crystal report add-in’s can be found at:  http://www.milletsoftware.com/

Happy Reporting!

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Accessing JQuerry or other scripts within MasterPages

Posted on 12/14/2010 by

I’ll preface this with the fact that I dabble in ASP.NET. It’s not my passion but I do enjoy working with it from time to time. As with anything this language is susceptible to the “use it or lose it” paradigm which I often experience between projects.  To this point I was hooking up a basic site the other day and the UI designer had provided me with a template of how the basic site should work from a UX standpoint. My role was to take this as the starting point and then flesh out the rest of the site with the business logic/code needed for the web app. Continue reading →

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Debugging Silverlight within a web app

Posted on 11/01/2010 by

When developing a Silverlight application the debugging of the app is pretty straight forward when you are working within the Silverlight solution/ project. But what about when you need to debug or “step-through the Silverlight application” from within your ASP.NET solution.  Visual Studio 2010 actually makes this quite easy to accomplish. Once you have added the Silverlight project or embedded the XAP file within your ASP.NET solution you can enable debugging of the Silverlight application by doing the following:

  1. From within the ASP.NET solution right-mouse click on the solution title nd select properties
  2. Navigate to the Web tab within the properties window
  3. Ensure that the Silverlight check box is enabled in the Debugger section
  4. Save the project properties
  5. Happy De-bugging

Enable Debug mode for Silverlight app from ASP.NET project

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Wrapping up the report writing workshop

Posted on 10/06/2010 by

It’s Wednesday and I’m moving into the final leg of my report writing workshop. The week is flying by and I always feel as if there is never enough time to teach my clients all that I want to about the Crystal Report API embedded in our product.  Never the less, we are forging ahead today and diving deeper into the component by introducing formulas. While I could easily take an entire week to just train my clients on formulas and all the cool things we can do with them in reports I only have two 1 /1/2 hour sessions to introduce them to formulas. 

With that being said, I’m including in this post a short pdf file that will help get most people started with a few basic (need to know) formulas.  While there are a ton of formulas available and the manner in which we use the formulas can seem to be endless I always feel as if there are a few basic formulas and operators that everyone should know.   Of course there’s always more to come and if you have questions or comments feel free to shoot them my way. I’ll respond as time allows and attempt to address most questions through the blog in an effort to help the community as a whole.

Useful formulas for reports

Happy reporting!

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Are you really ready to create that report

Posted on 10/04/2010 by

 If you’re new to report writing/creation then this post is certainly for you. Maybe you just started writing reports or worse yet you just attended a report writing workshop and now because you’ve “had some training” you are instantly perceived as the report guru at your office.  Of course you should be able to generate a report on nothing more than a brief description right?  The fact is you’re probably sitting there nodding your head and recalling that first time you were asked to create a report. Once the nausea passes and the cold clammy sweat dried from your palms you’ll have the realization that you had no idea where to start.  Like most, you’ll just dive head first into the task and begin linking tables and dropping fields on the report in the hope to have the report finished before lunch. If this is your regular approach, STOP. What I’m about to share with you will save you time, reduce your stress and help you design and deploy professional looking reports. Continue reading →

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Break Bad Habits – stop conditioning weakness

Posted on 09/30/2010 by

If you’re like me you have a desk job. My daily routine includes me getting up in the morning around 5:45 and getting in a workout before 7am. Then it’s off to work where I sit in front of a computer and for the rest of the day. Oh sure I may get up from time to time to run off to a meeting, the bathroom etc but other than that I am stuck sitting at that desk.   A desk job can lead to a number of bad habits such as overeating, and poor posture. But did you know that a desk job can also condition you to accept and in some instances depend on weakness?  I firmly believe we condition our bodies to look for way to “ease the burden” and as a result we end up creating mental crutches on how we function.  So I’m sure by now you’re asking… so what are these mental crutches and how can I break them? Continue reading →

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It’s time for Reports!

Posted on 09/30/2010 by

Ah yes, as the fall quickly approaches so does my employers annual users’ conference VisionAIR.com . I always enjoy this conference as it brings together a number of our clients to one location. For those interested VisionAIR develops software for the public safety industry, (911, Corrections, Mobile data, Records Management etc).  It’s during this time that I get to swap hats and convert from software development to trainer.  You see for the past 5 years I’ve trained a three-day report writing workshop at our conference that explains how to use the .NET Crystal report writing component used within our Records management product VisionRMS for the creation and development of Ad-Hoc reports.  I sporadically use Crystal Reports throughout the year and during this week it’s a nice break to dust off some of the rust as well as help others new to the application get up to speed or gain a working knowledge of the power of a good report writing tool.   I say a report writing tool because in essence, you could take the same concepts applied in the .net API and apply them towards Microsoft SQL Report Writing services or any other reporting tool out there. 

In the past I’ve recorded my sessions and distributed them on DVD along with training tutorials and quick reference guides to help our clients after the conference. I mean really… I recognize that we all lose focus after a few hours of training. Can you imagine three days? So this year I thought I would start a little differently by dedicating a section of my Blog to those interested in report writing and how to leverage some of the tools such as the .net report writing component.

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