How do I obtain reports on a secure webserver

[Former Member]

Hi

I should probably read the reams and reams on the BO/SAP site, but hopefully one of you experienced guys can point me in the right direction.

- I have a remote webserver that currently only accepts remote desktop from a chosen list of static IPs. The server is a couple of hours drive away.

- I have currently purchased CR2008

- The webserver is running WIndows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 and a public website.

- I have created some reports that work fine in CR2008 using a local copy of the data running on SQL server on my PC, with data taken from the nightly backup and imported into my local SQL server. This is a fairly - cumbersome procedure at the moment!

I want to be able to create a VB.Net (2005) application that allows a report to be selected and printed. Ideally my app would cycle through the list of reports, refresh the data, convert to PDF and attach to an email.

What is the best way to do this? I dont need help with the programming, just how to do the data connections / topology or what options I have. The data needs to be kept secure and ideally wouldnt compromise the security of our server. I am very experienced with .Net, but not very with ASP.Net.

Many thanks for your time!

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Your question is rather vague. Do you want to just get the data from that secure server, or are you expecting to also host your ASP.NET application there too? How many people need to interact with this application?

Really, this is probably a better question for your network or DB admin because it can be done so many different ways. Crystal Reports just needs to know where the data is. If you're just running the odd report and generating a PDF, you could probably create a service that does that and puts the resulting PDF on a network share or other acceptable location. If you're just after the data, you could expose it through a secure web service and consume that service in your application hosted elsewhere. Those are just two of many possibilities.

[former_member208657]

It sounds like you simply need to change databases at runtime in your app. Check out the sample here, https://boc.sdn.sap.com/node/8540. Please review the rest of the guide as well as it may give you the answers you are looking for.

[Former Member]

Thanks to both of you for your help.

I have decided to create a .Net app that runs on the server and generates the reports nightly, exports to PDF, zips them up and drops them into a password protected area on the webserver for download by authorised users.

Many thanks!