Connecting to the Data Sources

The Database class is used for examining the tables used in a report and their relationships with each other. It’s also used for setting the login information before opening the report. This class is described in Chapter 17.

Exporting Reports

If your application only sends reports to the printer, it is lacking the functionality to make your data accessible to a variety of applications. Crystal Reports lets you export a report in many different formats so that different applications can read the data. For example, you can export report data to an Excel spreadsheet so that an end user can perform a statistical analysis on the data. The ExportOptions class has the properties that specify the exporting options. This is discussed in Chapter 19.

Referencing and Formatting the Report Objects

The ReportDefinition class is responsible for maintaining the collections of the basic report objects. These objects consist of the Areas collection, Sections collection and the ReportObjects collection. Each Section class contains the report objects that are within that section. You can modify the formatting properties of any of these objects. This is discussed in Chapter 15.

Changing Report Objects

Every report can have many types of fields that are used to generate the report, but don’t have to appear directly on the report. Some examples are grouping fields, parameter fields, and formula fields. Even though these fields may not be shown directly on the report, they are updateable during runtime and can be used to change the report’s appearance. For example, you can change the grouping field so that the report sorts and summarizes in a new way. The DataDefinition class manages the collections that control these aspects of the report. These collections are discussed in the appropriate chapters throughout this book.