Hello, first of all I never worked with crystal reports. I need to do the following. I have a page which contains a datalist. Now I need to export this data to a pdf file for printing purpose. The normal printing via the IE or brwoser isnt that fancy. Now I
would like to know, if there is any possibility to create the pdf from my dataset/datalist? Thanks in advance.
You can create a crystal report by using a dataset, and you can make it fancy. But Crystal Reports can be complicated until you have used it once or twice. You can start at Crystal Alliance (http://aspalliance.com/crystal) for some introductory articles - make
sure you only read the ones for Crystal Reports .NET. There is also a free e-book at www.crystalreportsbook.com which is useful, and if you can,I suggest you buy the full book. Once you get started with creating a couple of simple reports, you can use an ado.net
dataset--read this article: http://support.businessobjects.com/communityCS/TechnicalPapers/rtm_reportingoffadonetdatasets.pdf
I read this document: http://support.businessobjects.com/communityCS/TechnicalPapers/rtm_reportingoffadonetdatasets.pdf and it requires that I create a rpt file manually. I would like to avoid this for the reason that I have many datalist reports and dont want
to re-create a rpt file for each of these. Ideally I would like to simply pass a filled ds to the report. However I dont know how far this is possible. Please share any ideas or suggestions. Thanks
The whole point of Crystal Reports is to use a designed report. How else would the data engine know where to place what field? If you want just columns of data, you can serialize your dataset to XML, and use that as an Excel spreadsheet. How diffrent are your
data lists? Do they have a similar number and type of fields?
I understand. However I dont want to create a rpt file. Maybe I should consider some pdf writer components. My datasets are basically created based on the stored procedure. They do have similar numbers and types of fields. Thanks so far.
I think Crystal Reports .NET might be a little to rigid for your needs. It doesn't have a good way to deal with different numbers and types of columns on the fly. Full versions of CR do have that ability, but they can get expensive depending on your use.
Depending on how you plan to format the output, Dynamic PDF generator might be enough: http://www.cete.com/Products/GeneratorForNET/ I've used the companion program (Merger), and it was incredibly easy to use.
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