I am using RDLC Reports and the report viewer control, and I am seeing that the more records there is in the final result the longer it takes to load.
It sounds to me that the RDLC report loads all records at once (and caches them locally) even though it paginates it when sending to the browser.
So I believe the solution should be to cause the report to load only the records needed for the current page.
How can I do this?
Or if there is another solution to optimize then please let me know
If you need to analyze and aggregate a huge amount of records (millions) you can do the work on sql server using a Stored Procedure or a Query and next you can output to the report viewer only the aggregated data.
This is useful when you don't need to show the details of your data in your report.
Related
I wanted to know if it is possible to refresh the data of a report when we open this one, in order to always see updated data in the report. I explain myself, if I publish a report in a workspace (other users have access to this workspace), I want that every time they open a report, this one would be updated.
Thanks for you help.
If you are importing data, I'm not sure if this is possible or not.
However, if you set up a Direct Query, then your data is pulled as you interact with the report.
I'm a programmer (mostly C++) who has moved into a non-software workplace. However, I don't have much experience with database stuff at all.
TL;DR: If we compare Crystal Reports to just writing scripts that execute SQL queries and parse the results, is there anything that CR can do that isn't possible via SQL queries & scripts? I'm talking purely in terms of extracting data - not making pretty documents.
Detail:
At my workplace they have a process where you run a bunch of Crystal Reports, modify the date range to the current month, manually export each to excel, delete the rows and columns that aren't needed, and then cut and paste into a summary excel document that is used by management.
To me, this is pretty crazy and stupid. I'd like to automate/script most of it.
So I have two options:
Learn Crystal Reports and try to modify the existing reports to be more automated.
Dump CR and just learn SQL and do the whole thing programmatically with scripts working with CSV files or something.
I'd much rather learn SQL since it's more general and useful. But I need to be assured that I can get the data output that I need (without writing a million lines of code to reproduce CR myself.)
So yeah, I'm looking for an answer like, "The two are equivalent. Anything you can do in CR you can do easily via scripts and SQL," or "If you need to group records into categories based on a parameter and then sum their one of their fields, then CR will do it much more easily than raw code," to push me in one direction or another.
Edit:
Some additional detail. At the moment my crystal reports run a database query, and then crystal does things like, "don't display the records that are returned, instead group the records by Field A and then display the count of how many records in each group."
Is functionality like this difficult to reproduce via SQL coding? I wouldnt want to have to write a python (or whatever) script to parse and manipulate the data from plaintext CSV, for example.
You can't just compare SQL and CR - they have different purpose. SQL (in this context) is data source, CR is pretty output formatter. For excel you would need data, not formatted output. Excel combined with SQL can give you all CR options (dynamic crosstab reports, charts etc) what you can't get directly from SQL data.
BTW, creating SQL views or procedures is often needed to overcome CR limitations; from this standpoint SQL has lot of more options than CR.
I personally would go with SQL+Excel route. In our company we're using simply SQL+CR without postprocessing, sometimes SQL+Excel. Our customers are using different approaches.
But like said by other people, choice of tools depends on more things. Who has to redesign reports? Who will maintain these reports? How often requirements change? Are there more uses for CR reports besides sourcing Excel tables? Who will be waked up at night, if reports do not work?
Management perpective:
In many I will say mostly cases management does not know SQL. So if a manager for E.g.HR wants to know staus about something then how he will get that status?? This is where Crystal reports come into picture, Using crystal reports they do not have to worry about SQL; they will just enter required fields and get their data.
Programmer perspective:
Simple data outputs can be achieved through SQL but consider a scenario where you need to pull details as well as summary. I agree it can be done via SQL but consider the overhead of time and proficiency required to develop such output using sql. I bet it wont be that easy to develop such output using sql as compared to crystal. So I will say learn both SQL and crystal, you will get to choose the tool to apply for your requirement.
You can write SQL and drop it into the Crystal Report. Best of both worlds, and possibly faster performance than the drag-and-drop Crystal functionality.
You will see some response time lag when the report runs.
There are actually a few things that Crystal Reports can do that are very tricky using plain SQL Queries as Crystal Reports can access the entire dataset in a single formula and can do things at runtime.
However unless you have some really crazy complex Crystal Reports I would recommend building a tool in Excel that can one click the info straight into a new sheet.
I did this and it got me a promotion, not kidding :P
I have a custom Excel Addin I can give you code to that basically does this:
On open, connects to the database and downloads a list of menu options connected to views and procedures
Adds these menu options into a new Ribbon tab within Excel
When one is clicked, runs the view and dumps the entire dataset (properly formatted) into a new sheet
Advantage of this is you can update the main menu list and each view it references without making any changes to the file or re-issuing anything to everyone.
Crystal could be helpful if you want to create a document with a specific layout , logos etc. and show some data on it. Export to excel from Crystal repot is not easy - usually there are a lot of empty columns and rows and each report should be tweaked to avoid that.
If you need to export some data from a SQLServer database to excel your best option will be SSIS ( I guess you have a license for SQL Server). If you don't have license for SSIS or you are using for example Access database there are also some inexpensive tools, which can retrieve data from any database ( not just SQLServer) and export it to excel. I would suggest you to check this one: http://www.r-tag.com. It can run Crystal reports and SQL reports so you can start using your crystal reports immediately and start transforming them to SQL reports whenever you have time for that. Both reports could be exported to excel.
i fixed this by editing excel sql, Left(Column_maxLength, 250)
this resolved my issue
in my case if even if i read left 250 character is enough
I have a report made in Crystal Reports XI. The report is generated and exported to PDF in visual basic script using COM interface. Generally everything is running smoothly, but in one case generation breaks with error:
Failed to retrieve data from the database. Details: [Database Vendor Code 9421]
Database used is MSSQL 2005 connected over ODBC to CR XI. When I am opening report with exactly the same parameters in Designer, everything works fine.
It looks like it is data related, but it is hard to trace since the whole report is pretty sophisticated. Anyway I spent half a day on crawling over Dr. Google and it seems that he has no clue what might be an issue.
When you previewed the report in Crystal Reports Developer, did you look at the whole thing? Some custom formulae are not calculated until you actually look at the page.
Try scrolling through the entire report top to bottom. If your error message pops up halfway through and Crystal refuses to preview the rest of the report, then there's probably some anomaly in your datasource that is tripping up a custom Formula in your Crystal Report.
I'm having this problem:
The SQL Server holds a said value, let's say 990.30, the Reporting Services Report show a different value (948.33) when viewed online, in the brower and a third value (912.22) when the report is exported to Excel.
There are no formulas on Excel, just plain values.
Also, there's no formula on the layout of the report.
The code shows only a simple select that, when run on the SQL Server Management Studio, returns me the original value (990.30).
How on earth shall I start to troubleshoot this ?
I've never heard of this kind of problem before. I would recommend submitting a ticket to Microsoft and provide them with screen shots of the errors, the RDL file, a sample output of the stored procedure, etc.
To troubleshoot this on your own, I would recommend creating a new report that just has a simple table that returns all the details from your stored procedure or query to validate the values are consisten across all interfaces. From there, just start adding on complexity until you get the report to look like it is today.
Does anyone have a recommendation for an excellent reference on Microsoft's ReportViewer (VS 2008 flavour) when used in local mode? I'm currently using it but parts of it are a bit of a black box so I'd like to read up on the entire subject.
Especially want to start using sub-reports to display more complex parent-child reports. I'm assuming they work in a similar mode to Crystal Reports with which I'm reasonably familar.
Thanks, Rob.
The link to http://www.gotreportviewer.com is a good once but it does look like material on local sub reports and ReportViewer 2008 is a little sparse and spreadout across the net. It would be a subject worth blogging about so I will :-)
Here are a few headlines:
A subreport is a completely separate report but is linked to the master report using the standard report parameter mechanism. The master report is configured to pass one or more of it's fields (e.g. the primary key) to the subreport. The subreport typically then uses this parameter as a parameter to it's own query to load a dataset
Even though you may have defined a data source against the subreport when designing it, this isn't used when used in a master report. Instead you have to implement a handler for the SubreportProcessing event. The same handler is called for each subreport you add to your master report so you can query the parameters passed to the handler to determine the dataset to load.
The event handler is called once for each record in master report. For example, if the master report displays 200 records, the event handler is called 200 times but with a different parameter each time.
Because of this, you have to be wary of performance. The first report I ran had 2,000 records (perfectly okay for a flat report) but each of those 2,000 records fetched 20 child records for the subreport. It did run but took several minutes before the report was rendered
If you can structure your data so that a single dataset can be used containing data for both the master and subreport, then nested data regions have better performance - only one query to return 2,000 records not 2,000 individual queries. See http://www.gotreportviewer.com/masterdetail/index.html
Cheers, Rob.
I worked with the ReportViewer control at one point and was able to find some good information at http://www.gotreportviewer.com
Was the documentation insufficient? In what way?
Reporting Services and ReportViewer Controls in Visual Studio
Samples and Walkthroughs
ReportViewer Controls (Visual Studio)