Crystal Reports™ 8.5 Developer's Guide

Overview
Overview
In response to the question, “What data can I use when building reports in the
RDC?”,theansweris,“You have virtually no limitations.” The RDC has been
designed to use virtually any data source with minimal work on your part.
The Report Designer Component supports data access through Data Access
Objects (DAO), Remote Data Objects (RDO), and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO).
Through these three access methods, you can connect to most ISAM, ODBC, and
SQL data sources available to Windows applications. In addition, you can create
DAO Recordsets, RDO Resultsets, or ADO Recordsets in Visual Basic, then replace
the data source used by a report at runtime by calling the SetDataSource method
oftheRDCruntimeReportobject.
The Report Designer Component also provides the ability to design reports based
on Data Definition files, text files that define the fields, and field types of a database
without actually serving as a source of data. Using Data Definition files, you can
design a report without depending on the existence of a database at design time,
then dynamically create the data at runtime and assign it to the Report object of the
Report Designer Component.
If you have installed the full Crystal Reports product, you also have the ability to
use the Report Designer Component to connect to any data source that Crystal
Reports can connect to. In such a case, the Report Designer Component
implements the Crystal Reports user interface that you are already familiar with,
soyoucanquicklyconnecttoanyexistingdata.
Finally, the Report Designer Component also supports Data Environments in
Visual Studio 6.0.
Probably the best way to cover all of the data sources is to take a brief look at the
Data Explorer dialog box. This dialog box appears when you select Add Database
to Report or Set Location, and it lists data source options in a hierarchical tree view.
Visit the Library on the Seagate Software website to get documentation and
knowledge base articles about data access.
40 Crystal Reports Developer’s Guide