Visual FoxPro Programming for Crystal Reports

An in-depth look at how to integrate Crystal Reports with Visual FoxPro applications.

This course is aimed at Visual FoxPro developers who want to use Crystal Reports as their main reporting tool. It will show you how to create a wide range of reports based on Foxpro data and how to integrate the reports into your VFP applications.

Suggested length: Two days

Note: We also have a Crystal Reports course for end users.

Delivery

We can bring this course to your site, anywhere in the UK, the rest of Europe, the USA or Canada. The course is also available for one-to-one training at our office in Edinburgh. For further information, please see Overview of training options.

What you will achieve

At the end of the course, delegates who meet the pre-requisites will be able to write VFP program code to manage and control Crystal Reports from within their applications. You will be able open, print, preview and export reports under program control, and give your users many options for modifying the appearance and behaviour of the reports at run time.

Pre-requisites

To benefit from the course, you should be an experienced Visual FoxPro programmer with a good understanding of its OOP features. Experience of COM would be useful but is not essential. You do not need any previous knowledge of Crystal Reports.

Course contents

Getting started with Crystal Report

• Creating reports in the CR design surface; using CR experts
• Adding more sophisticated features: grouping, sorting, aggregation, conditional formatting, record selection, special fields, run-time parameters
• 'Programming' reports with the Crystal Formula Language

Using VFP as a data source

• Creating reports based on VFP free tables
• Using ODBC to connect to VFP databases (DBCs)
• Changing file locations at run time
• Dealing with changes in table structures

Distributing reports to non-CR users

• Exporting reports to Word, PDF, etc.
• Using stand-alone report viewers
• Integrating reports with a web browser

Integrating reports in VFP applications

• Using the Report Design Component to control reports programmatically
• Creating a custom preview window with the Report Viewer control
• Dealing with Report Viewer events
• Changing the data source at run time
• Refreshing data programmatically; working with run-time parameters
• Creating a generic report selector form
• Letting the user customise the content, layout and formatting of reports
• Controlling grouping, sorting and record selection at run time
• Printing and exporting reports under program control
• Distributing CR components with your VFP applications

Version

The course requires Crystal Reports version 9.0 or later, Developers Edition. The course is suitable for programmers working in versions of Visual FoxPro from 6.0 to 9.0.