Steve,

You don't have to use ODBC. You can use OLE DB and there is no ODBC configuration.

You should start learning the RDC NOW. The OCX had been pulled from Crystal 9. Also, you can no longer create standalone reports as EXEs.


>I install the full developer version on my PC only. I only put a run-time EXE Crystal file on user PCs (workstations) on network like I do for VFP. So you don't need to install it on all user PCs unless your users need to develop or want to create their own reports from scratch, but I imagine then you would be better off getting some kind of site license from Crystal.
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>The part that causes me some grief with workstations is that I use the older OCX control for Crystal in VFP forms and so I have to go around and install DLL files and stuff from VFP setup wizard for Crystal reports tied to VFP to work properly, otherwise the workstation will run a report and it will run, but be empty except for headers and footers.
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>The standard is to use Crystal Reports RDC method for making reports, not OCX (old-fashioned method) as I still do.
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>The only other tricky part is making sure you run ODBC Administrator on each workstation that is going to run Crystal Reports. Go into ODBC Admin under the Control Panel and run it and set the path under Configure button and VFP tables to a path for VFP free tables such as i:\mydata. We found it's easier to put all VFP DBs that Crystal is going to access via a network into one path/directory. You don't have to, but we think it's easier. Otherwise, you have to go in and run the ODBC Administrator and set the path for each report that requires a DB in a different location. Or there is a way to this on the fly when passing parameters from VFP form to Crystal, but I have not tried it. Also, if your Crystal report uses multiple VFP DBs for a single report where the tables are linked together it's easier if all of those DBs(tables) are in the same path/directory location.
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>One of these days I will get up to speed on RDC component in Crystal, but have not had time to learn it yet. I know passing parameters from VFP to Crystal is slightly different between the preferred RDC Crystal method and the older OCX Crystal method.