See also:

• Crystal Reports: SQL introduction

• Crystal Reports: Generate SQL to Change Selected Records in Crystal Reports

• Crystal Reports: SQL Commands in Crystal Reports

• Crystal Reports: Useful SQL Utility: Crystal SQL Designer

• Crystal Reports: SQL Left Join

• Crystal Reports: SQL Expressions and Sub Selects

Use SQL commands to create audit records of your reports.

SQL commands are a powerful feature, introduced in Crystal Reports 9. In other articles, we mentioned that you can use them with UNION joins, Sub-SELECT clauses, and Parameters. 

But, there is more power there than first appears. You can also use SQL commands to perform DELETEs and UPDATEs in your database. 

To create an audit record every time the report is processed, use an SQL command of:

INSERT INTO Audit (User, RunDate) VALUES (‘{?UserID}’, GETDATE())
SELECT * FROM Customers

If this raises any security concerns, use the Database security to restrict your Crystal reports designers to “read only” access and these SQL commands will not process. 

Now, you'll want to track and document what these SQL commands do. The perfect tool for that is:

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