Crystal Report In Sap business one

Introduction

The Crystal Reports Integration for SAP Business One offers a quick and easy mechanism for publishing any Crystal Reports .rpt file to the SAP Business One menu and executing and viewing the report via the .Net Winform viewer.  By utilizing the UI API provided as part of the SAP Business One SDK and the Crystal Reports .Net Winform viewer, any user of SAP Business One can access and run the reports published securely on to the SAP Business One menus.  The Crystal Reports Integration for SAP Business One is delivered within the SDN license structure and therefore no support is provided.

Architecture and Caveats on Direct Database Access

In order to use Crystal Reports with SAP Business One, it is necessary to utilize one of the built in data access drivers for either Microsoft SQL Server or IBM DB2 depending on the engine being used for the underlying data.

While direct data access is the fastest way of retrieving the information contained inside the SAP Business One databases, there are a couple of caveats. The most important one is to be aware that any underlying changes in the SAP Business One data structures may require additional design work to update the report to adapt to the new data structure. 

Having said that, there are a number of mechanisms in Crystal Reports 2008 to simplify this process including the Verify Database command. 

You should use the Verify Database command to make certain your report prints with the current version of the active database and resets its record buffers to the current record size.

When you first create a report, the report draws its fields from the database as it exists at that time. It uses the structure of the database (number of fields, field position, data type, and so on) to identify and select those fields you want placed on the report. If you change the structure of the database (by adding or deleting fields) after you create the report.

Crystal Reports needs to adapt the report to the new structure. This command is the tool you can use for adapting the report to the new database structure.

• If the database has more fields now than it had when the report was first created, Crystal Reports attempts to identify and use the correct fields from the new database. The aim is to print an unchanged version of the report even though the underlying database has changed.
• If the database has fewer fields now than it had when the report was first created, it uses those fields that are still available when it prints the report and ignores those that are no longer available.

You can also use the Database Expert to add additional tables and fields to your reports as well as building new links to those tables.