Crystal Reports 10: The Complete Reference

You ll want to consider a Business Views implementation if you have any combination of complex databases and report designers who don t want to learn all the intricacies of these databases. This combination probably describes the environment at a fairly large number of organizations, yours very possibly included. Creative use of Business Views will allow Crystal Reports designers to get access to organizational data with minimal difficulty, allowing data fields to be presented in a simple, intuitive fashion. And, Business Views also allows Crystal Enterprise 10 reports to implement row security, tailoring the set of data viewed online to just that allowed for a particular viewer. For example, you can design a single company-wide Crystal Report using a Business View and have individual departments see only their data when they view the report.

The first concept that will impact many potential Business Views users is where it s based. While the older Crystal Dictionaries tool could be used by itself with stand-alone copies of Crystal Reports, Business Views requires installation of Crystal Enterprise (CE) ”in fact, it s integral to CE and cannot be used without it. Each report designer who wishes to use Business Views must first log on to Crystal Enterprise with a valid CE user ID and password. This requires your organization to consider CE licensing and cost issues when considering whether, and how much, to rely on Business Views. And, unlike the older Crystal Dictionaries tool, Business Views and Crystal Enterprise require knowledge and infrastructure within your organization to support the more complex Crystal Enterprise environment (more general Crystal Enterprise topics can be found in Part II of this book).

Once you ve properly installed Crystal Enterprise (or, as part of the CE planning process), you ll want to think about where Business Views capabilities will be important for you. In some cases, more experienced report designers may prefer to bypass Business Views and report directly against the production database. In others, you may wish to provide Business Views access to simplify report design for introductory report designers. And, there may be other situations that call for Business Views use with all users to take advantage of row and column security features limiting data to that required for individual department or job functions. As with a report design project, Business Views implementation requires some forethought and planning.

Business Views Objects

Business Views are more complex and flexible than previous Crystal Dictionaries or Info Views. While familiarity with these older products, or meta data tools in general, will be helpful in designing Business Views, the steps involved to use the tool vary widely from other products and will take some time to become familiar with.

When you first create a Crystal Report and look for data in the Crystal Repository (where Business Views are stored), you ll find only one type of Business View object: the Business View itself. When you connect your report to the Business View, the set of fields that the Business View exposes will appear in the Field Explorer. If the Business View includes row or column security, you ll see a limited set of field and record data when you run the report.

However, there are many additional objects that actually go into creating the Business View:

• Data Connection This is a core connection to the actual production database. Like Crystal Reports, Business View Data Connections can be made via native database drivers, ODBC, OLE DB, and other standard Crystal connection methods .

• Dynamic Data Connection This is similar to a Data Connection but can actually encompass two or more connections to like database structures. A Dynamic Data Connection allows you to connect to multiple databases, allowing the report designer or CE report viewer to choose which connection to use when running the report. This is helpful for test database/production database environments where a report viewer may want to choose an alternate database to report against on the fly.

• Data Foundation This portion of Business Views is where much of the capability of the tool comes to light. Here, you connect one or more Data Connections or Dynamic Data Connections together to provide a combined set of database fields. You may also create formulas, SQL expressions, filters, and parameter fields to further customize your view. When complete, the Data Foundation contains a combined set of all fields (both database fields and derived formulas) that can be used to form your ultimate customized data view.

• Business Element This portion of Business Views equates to a virtual table that is ultimately exposed to the report designer. Here, you choose only those fields that you actually wish a report designer to see. You may also rename fields here to be more meaningful.

• Business View This portion, which is ultimately available to a Crystal Report designer, combines one or more Business Elements together to form the ultimate table and field structure available to the report designer.

Each object in Business Views is dependent upon another, and at least one of each object (except a Dynamic Data Connection) must exist before a report designer can make use of a Business View. A Business View (the object that a report designer actually uses) requires one or more Business Elements. Business Elements are based on Data Foundations. Data Foundations are made up of one or more Data Connections or Dynamic Data Connections. And, Dynamic Data Connections are based on Data Connections.