I'm getting an odd error that I am having trouble figuring out and I was hoping others may have some idea.
No do not get overly concerned about the error itself. I think the error is just an indicator of what the real problem is. I do NOT think that just fixing the error will fix the problem. So consider that it's a key to the issue but not the issue itself. Maybe it is, but I don't think so.
The issue is that I have about 30+ reports that were developed on version v.10.2.3300 some years ago. About a week ago I got tasked with upgrading those to CR for Visual Studio 2010. No problem there at all. They came strait through with the upgrade process. They ran fine in development and I never had any problems. That was until I deployed them. I deployed them on a test development server and on that server I have VS2010 installed with CRfor2010. I basically just recompile the code there with the intent to test it and deploy it onto test servers from this development server. So that is the enviroment. It should be virutally the same as my development machine... but it is a phyiscally different machine running Windows server.
The SQL Server is it's own box and seperate from my development pc or the development testing server. That is important in regards to the issue maybe being SQL permissions. But note that this SQL Server is the same SQL Server I hit from my development PC and from the develpment test server. I have a user account for the reports and I use the same account when running the reports via my dev pc or the dev server.
Now on my own dev pc I run things and they work without any problems. But on the dev server I get the follwing error:
A string is required here. Details: errorKind Error in File PIMS_Client_Info {EFA7A4DA-5EE3-4ECB-921C-195A9DFB1A74}.rpt: Error in formula Project_Labour_Multiplier: 'if ' A string is required here. Details: errorKind
Now I have not used Crystal in a LONG time. Probably not seen 2001 when the beta's first came out for .Net. I moved into an environment where I did not need it and have not used it since then. So I am not familiar with Crystal as it currently stands, other than the past few weeks of working through this issue. So I could be missing something very simple and obvious here. I really hope that is the case.
Now when I run all of my various 30+ reports, a few work. The ones that work do not use formulas. So we quickly realized that was the issue. We rewrote one of the reports as a test and removed the formula. It works fine.
So in summary, here's the status of things:
- Reports run fine from a dev pc. No problems at all.
- Reports return formula errors from the dev server.
- If we remove the forumlas, the reports run from the dev server without any problems.
- Our problem is that some of the reports need the formulas and we can rewrite them all.
Question:
How can two installs that are basically identical except for one being Win7x64 and the other being Windows Server x64, not both have the same issues with the formula's?
Of course we did check to make sure the data coming into the formula was valid. Obviously if on the dev pc data was being returned, whereas on the dev server data was not, that would mess up the formula. Like if we started sending back nulls or something only on the dev box. We validated that because they all run stored procedures and the input is very simple... account id. Those stored procedures seem to be fine. But there may still be something here that we are missing in this regards.
Question:
Is there anything that anyone can think of in regards to the installation, configuration, permissions, etc. that might be causing this problem? Does it sound like it's just a data issue? Is there something that might have happened during the installation or some issue with the older versions DLLs maybe causing problems? Is there anything in regards to Crystal that would cause an error like this to show up on one machine and not the other in regards to installation of Crystal or anything else that you can think of? The formulas hold the key to what is going on. Is there anything in that regards that might clue us into the issue here?
We've been focused on the issue being that the data coming back on the dev pc and the dev server must be different. But that does not seem to be the case. That is where I am focusing but I'm wondering if the Crystal formula's are handled via a DLL or something that we might be having a issue with on the dev server whereas on the dev pc we are not.
Any thoughts, suggestions, or ideas would be appreciated. We are running out of ideas.
Best regards,
Jon