Crystal Reports: XML intro: XML and Crystal Reports

Everyone is talking about XML.

We use XML in many of our products and email XML documents regularly. We find some sites that block these attachments. XML is a “safe” format in that it only contains data and structure information. As more applications expand to support this as a format we would recommend that you talk to you mail administrators to make sure that XML is an approved document format. Blocking XML attachments just doesn’t make sense.

XML is a computer industry standard for data exchange. The beauty of XML is that the both the structure and content of data is specified in an XML document. I am sure we will be seeing XML imports and exports in future database products. There is even an XML database now available.

We added XML functionality to Crystal via a user function library. With our new Crystal functions you can have a report create an XML document when the report is viewed. So if you need that XML document from your system as well as your report, give our XML functions a look.

XML Support. XML is a data exchange format similar to the HTML you find on a Web page. XML is particularly suited to electronic commerce as it is environment and machine independent. An XML document includes both structure and content. You can use a schema to convert an XML document to a wide range of different formats.

Crystal Reports 8.5 can use an XML document as a data source (via an ODBC driver) and can generate XML data as an export format. This enables you to use Crystal Reports as a key component of your e-commerce strategy.

XML features in Crystal Reports. XML is a document format similar to the HTML used to generate web pages. XML documents include both the structure of the data and the data values. So while a CSV (Comma Delimited Values) file contains a list of data values, you need some additional information to know that the third value is your General Ledger Code and the sixth is the GST amount.

An XML document has that information included against each of the values. Because XML is just a text format they are easy and safe to transfer between computers and even through firewalls into protected networks. XML is becoming the major data format on the Internet, so it is a standard you will encounter.

Crystal Reports 8.5 (and higher) can both generate an XML file from your Crystal report and can use an XML file as a data source.

If you have a version of Crystal Reports prior to 8.5, we have a User Function Library you can use to add XML document creation to your report. A full set of instructions and a limited demo is available from here.

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