To which server/location we export Crystal Reports for VISUAL STUDIO?

[Former Member]

Is to SAP BO Repository or IIS server?

Now following is the scenario and questions-

We are working on Crytal Reports for Visual Studio 10.

In .Net code we found these queries-

1. "SELECT TOP 1 * FROM CI_INFOOBJECTS WHERE SI_NAME = '" + tName + IFMGEnvPrefix + "' AND SI_INSTANCE = 0"

2. "SELECT TOP 1 * FROM CI_SYSTEMOBJECTS WHERE SI_ID =" + iStoreU.EnterpriseSession.UserInfo.UserID

These queries are being used for populating parameters in the web page.

Question 1. What are the above queries doing?

2. Where to query CI_INFOOBJECTS and CI_SYSTEMOBJECTS as we are on BO 6.5 and after googling I found that CI_INFOOBJECTS and CI_SYSTEMOBJECTS are not in BO 6.5 and also Query Builder is not supported in BO 6.5.

3. Is Crystal Reports for VISUAL STUDIO independent of SAP BO platform?

[DellSC · Accepted solution]

The Crystal 10 SDK will NOT work for versions of BO earlier than BO XI or later than BO XI 3.1. Neither of these versions is currently supported, just as 6.5 is no longer supported.

Also, you can't use the same queries for BO 6.5 - when BO XI was published in 2004-ish, the back-end database was completely changed because the acquisition of Crystal Info was used to build the new version of the application. Coming from the Crystal side of things, I never used any of the earlier versions of BO, so I'm not sure where to tell you to go to get the information.

1. It looks like the first query is trying to get info about a report and the second one is getting info about a user.

2. You can't.

3. It depends. The Crystal 10 version that came with VS 2005 and 2008 included the assemblies that would allow you to connect to BO XI or 3.1. However, you didn't have to use that connection. For VS 2010 and newer, you will need to get the latest version of Crystal for Visual Studio which can be downloaded here: https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/Crystal+Reports%2C+Developer+for+Visual+Studio+Downloads. Be sure to follow the directions on the page - you'll need the "Install Executable" for integration into Visual Studio. The other downloads are the various runtime install formats for use ONLY when deploying your application.

-Dell

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dell,

Thanks for your answer.

So if we create reports in "Crystal Reports for VISUAL STUDIO", to which location/repository we shall export them.

For example if we create reports in Web Intelligence then we export them to the SAP BO Repository.

Thanks and Regards,

Amit

[DellSC · Accepted solution]

Crystal Reports for Visual Studio will not let you publish reports to BusinessObjects - you need the full version of Crystal for that. If you're using Crystal for VS to integrate reports into an application outside of BusinessObjects, then you would save the reports to disk and either compile them into your application or load them from a specific disk location in your code.

-Dell

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Dell. Have you got any chance to come across the tables CI_INFOOBJECTS and CI_SYSTEMOBJECTS

with regard to Crystal Reports for VISUAL STUDIO?

[DellSC · Accepted solution]

They're not available in the version of BO that you have - 6.5 has a completely different table structure in the CMS database. And even if they were, you would have to be on version 4.2 SP3 or newer in order to have the access to the new CMS data connector to query them from Crystal. The vast majority of the information that you would be interested in reporting on is stored in a proprietary format in a BLOB field and cannot be queried directly. Instead, you have to use either QueryBuilder or one of the SDKs to access that data.

-Dell

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Dell. Probably the last question.

Are Crystal Reports for VS and Crystal Enterprise same?Can those tables be found in Crystal Enterprise and queried via .Net code as in .Net code we found query like below-

var ePortObj = iStoreU.Query("SELECT TOP 1 " + finalSelectStr + " FROM CI_APPOBJECTS WHERE SI_PARENTID = 99 AND SI_PROGID='CrystalEnterprise.ePortfolio'");

Thanks and Regards,

Amit Tyagi

[DellSC · Accepted solution]

No and no. You cannot use the Crystal for VS SDK to work with Crystal for Enterprise (CRE) reports. Also, you must have a recent version of BO in order to use CRE because it requires that a connection be configured in the BI Platform in order to connect to the database. CRE is optimized to access SAP HANA, BW, and .unx universes.

Also, the tables you see in these queries are NOT actual physical tables in the database. There is NO way to connect to the CMS database from reports prior to BI Platform version 4.2 SP3 which includes a special data connector for that purpose. There is a universe available for this here: https://archive.sap.com/documents/docs/DOC-74580. Also, the latest version of Crystal for VS does NOT include this connector because it is designed for use with reports that are not published to the BI Platform ONLY.

-Dell