Crystal Reports: Business Views Beginner's Guide

A beginners guide to Business Views

One neat and powerful feature that debuted with Crystal Reports 10 is the ability to base a report on a Business View. Business Views are stored in the Crystal Enterprise 10 repository, so you will need to include a Crystal Enterprise server and user licenses in your plans to use these.

Depending on your version of Crystal Enterprise, you will access these via the Business Layer tool (right click on the current project, select NEW > Business Layer).

The Business View is a major improvement on the earlier Crystal Dictionary and Info View tools included with previous versions of Crystal Reports and Seagate Info.

Business Views enable you to control the presentation of your database to report designers and users. They also include a sophisticated security model with both row and column security for groups of users.

The Business View designer enables you to create, edit, rename, and delete the various objects. This includes Business Views, Business Elements, Business Foundations, and Data Connection objects.

You will need to do some planning before you start. While Business Views are easy to use and include some powerful features, you will get more benefit if you plan your Business Views properly before you create any objects.

Poor planning can create seemingly endless headaches. The main thing to keep in mind is the taxonomy. Plan out a structure with a logical hierarchy and with logical names that are meaningful. Think in terms of a really good paper filing system. Speaking of paper, that particular item may come in handy (along with a pencil) for sketching out your plan before you start implementing it.

Here are some key terms you should know:

Business Views: Reports are based on Business Views. These appear as objects in the Repository section of the database expert. A Business View is a collection of one or more Business Elements. Each element appears as a logical table with fields from each element. Elements in the same Business View can not be based on more than one Data Foundation.

Business Element: A Business Element is a logical collection of fields. You can regard a business element as a virtual “table” although it can include formulas, SQL expressions, filters, etc. Each Business Element must be based on a single Business Foundation.

Data Connection: A data connection includes the ODBC, user and password information needed to connect to the source data. You can hide the user id and password inside the connection or set it to prompt the user when the connection is required. You can also remove those “owner.database” parts of the table name if it’s causing you problems.

Dynamic Data Connection: This is a separate object that lets you select from more than one Data Connection. The selection is controlled by a parameter. One potential use of this feature is to select the Live or Test database at report time.

This is the only object that is optional, and you may only have one in each Business Foundation. The object model is a lot more complex than the earlier tools. However, they are easy to configure and have a lot of functionality. We see this being a useful way to manage your corporate data. Of course, you can still access your data in the same way as previously – this gives added powerful benefits.

This article is copyrighted by Crystalkeen, Mindconnection, and Chelsea Technologies Ltd. It may be freely copied and distributed as long as the original copyright is displayed and no modifications are made to this material. Extracts are permitted. The names Crystal Reports and Seagate Info are trademarks owned by Business Objects.