Professional Crystal Enterprise Suite Interview Preparation Guide

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Yes, There are options in crystal reports for summing up
the records. You can sum the records by group , or by grand
total. There is also another feature for summing up
is "Running Total". You can just insert running totals, or
summaries by just using the icons or you can write your own
formula.

I don't know how this question can be answered interms of
crystal enviroment. Anyhow I know somethig abt caching,
There are many servers comes along with your CRS suite, BO,
or Crystal Enterprise suite.
All these servers run behind crystal reports to run and
publish the reports successfully. Maintaining all these
servers is kind of amin job.
Below are the list of servers that work together to make
Crystal reports a successfull pack:
1) Input server(File repository Server)
2)Output server(File Repository Server)
3) Cache server
4) destination job server
5) event server
6)list of values job server
7) page server
8)program job server
9) RAS(Reports Application Server)
10)report job server
11)CMS(Central Management Server)

No its not supporting all the functionalities or oracle
like triggers, cursors etc.

Yes we can use stored procedure for creating the report
with the help of Add commoand.

Yes, go to the main menu on the top of the window..--
>Database-->database expert..through this you can add any
d/b fileds.

Report Header, Page Header,Detail section,Report Footer,
Page Footer.

We can use our own sql by add command funtion in to the
crystal reports.

We can create the report but we must having the primary
key for both the database, otherwise it fails to create the
smart linking between two database.
Generally using more than one link is not supported.

We can export the data in Word doc. Adobe Acrobat,
HTML,Excel,Rich Text format,XML.

Go to Field explorer-right click on any of the filed
like formula field,Database field,special fields,Formula
field, running total field etc.


Using Database expert-->Current connection-->OLEDB
Connections-->Microsoft OLEDB SQL SERVER OR choose whatever
the database like oracle,sql server,sybase..etc..
-->will get another window with server info.address. and
login information.

Generally we use Crystal Reports with VB6. However we can
make crystal report stand-alone application also. But for
that limitation is for viewing the report user should have
crystal reports installed on his/her PC.

Method 1

You can use Business Objects toolbar which comes with
crystal report viewer control in ASP.NET.

enable the toolbar and you can see options for printing.


Method 2
Finally you crystal report will be shown in ASP.net page
as HTML so you can print you html page using Javascript

window.print()

Advantage of having Crystal report:
Say if you have billions of data and you need to
group/sum the data then Crystal reports is the tool
to use to do the calculations and other business login in
easy and professional way.
You can provide drilldown options, hyperlinks to the
data, alert the user based on the data, pictorial view of
the data using Graphs and all these thing you can do it on
fly.

Disadvantage of using ur own reports:
You need to code for each and everything in your report
and which needs more time.

Use the OLAP Grid command to insert an OLAP Grid into your
report. When you choose the OLAP Grid command, the OLAP
Expert appears. The term OLAP is used to refer to all common
forms of OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) and
multi-dimensional data storage and access systems.

We can create report types like

1.Form/Layout
2.Summary
3.Listing Reports

Moreover you can create your own report format and make it
as template for your other reports in Crystal.

Subreport is like the main report however the values from
the subreport can be passsed to the main report. If we wish
to link the subreport to the main rport then it is called
as a 'Linked Sub report' else it is a 'Un linked Sub
report'. Any number of sub reports ca be placed in a main
report. However the maximum number being 256. In practise
you would never have so many sub - reports in a main
report.

No. in Sub Report we cann't insert subReport.

There are three types of subreports
a.Unlinked Subreport
ie the subreport doesn't depend on the main report
at all.

b.Linked subreport

A linked subreport is handy when we need to display
related data elements from more than one database table on
a report

c.On-Demand Subreport

If your report has a section that handles a large number of
records, you can put that section into an on-demand
subreport. An on-demand subreport appears as a hyperlink in
the primary report. When you open the primary report, no
data is retrieved for the on-demand subreport until you
drill down on the hyperlink.

Group: To change the group using chang group option. or
goto the group expert we can change the group.

Parameter: To set the parameter order. To change the
parameter value goto edit menu.

A section expert is used for the entire section, it could
be the details section or the header section. Once you
change the settings in the section expert it can be seen
through out the section. if we want to make sure that a
specific data has to be displayed in the entire setion ,
then you can write a formula for that in the section expert
which will work good for all the sections.

1. Go to Record!Selection formula.
2. Record!In the formula workshop.
isnull({Customer.Address2}) = false // Customer.Address is
the field

Basically, what is a template.....a set of object frames
placed in a way that suits most of the requirements of day
to day office work.

To create a template, u can either develop a variation from
the existing templates of the Crystal reports Suite or open
a saved report, , in the new report u r creating, click on
the template expert and choose template from existing file.
the template, that is the object frames and not the data
will be copied to the new report u r developing.
even , now u have the liberty to make changes, and save
them for future use as template!
So u can literally create as many differnt types of
templates as u like through all the templates already
available or the reports u created from teh scratch.

menu - performance information. it gives all the details

running total is line by line total
Ex : Debit credit Balance

the balance is the running total

sub total is after last record
exp : Debit Credit
Balance
The balance us sub total

For tuning of reports we can use the following ways
1 Check the option Perform grouping on Server, Use indexes
or server for speeds.
File>Report Option>Perform grouping on Server.
File>Report Option>Use indexes or server for speeds.
2 Instead of joining DB tables on report , use add command
option. Put all the filters, Prompts in SQL command. This
way report will run faster.
3 Uncheck option save data with report.
File>Report Option>Save data with report.
4 If report contain Many Sub reports, use a prompt which
ask whether you want that particular data or not. If Use
chooses no, then that prompt’s data value should be in
Report selection criteria of report. based on that value do
coding to not to get data on report.