Visual Basic 6 and Crystal Reports9 Deployment.
Spontaneous Creations - 2003

The accompanying file will help to deploy Crystal Reports, within a Visual Basic 6 application, using INNO Setup and ISTools.

INNO and ISTools have not approved or endorsed this script or any of the associated documentation.

This documentation and script is to be used at your own risk.  In addition, it is assumed you will/have make/made yourself familiar with the deployment environments.

Needless to say, Microsoft, Adobe Acrobat and Crystal Decisions have not approved or endorsed the content of this information.

However, the creators acknowledge the assistance of Crystal Decisions Support Staff.  In addition to acknowledging the assistance of those members of VBForums.com who helped to get this project completed. (Ken, you were awesome!)

INNO setup: www.jrsoftware.org

ISTools: www.istool.org

The .rpt was pre-made and is distributed with the application.


This setup file will assist in the export of the following.  However, the only export tested to completion at this time, was Acrobat .pdf format.  The accompanying VB.txt file is the scripting used within the VB6 application, placed behind a simple command button.

Export formats:
PDF
To disk
Mapi
Crystal Reports
Odbc
Rtf

Use of the Crystal Reports Report Viewer will require additional .dll deployment.  Crystal Decisions white papers may assist you in determining which files to add.

You may edit the setup.iss script (after you have opened it in INNO or ISTool) replacing the obvious (My Program, whatever.com, etc.)

We have included the MDAC_Typ portion because there seemed to be quite a few questions about that.

You may edit the VB Files as you see fit, I left them in for demonstration purposes, mainly.

The ATL.dll section is VERY important if you are going to deploy to different Windows platforms!  I wouldn't touch that, until you understand the differences.

For ease of deployment, we created a vbfiles directory, to house all of our Visual Basic files associated with the program.  This makes updating the files easier and convenient.

For ease of deployment, we created a crfiles directory, to house all of our Crystal Reports files associated with the program.  This makes updating the files easier and convenient.

We would suggest you copy the CR files referenced and any others needed, from the Crystal Reports CD!  If you do not, version conflicts may occur!  In addition, we suggest you watch all cr files during the compiling, to ensure they are starting with the version you desire. 

The placement of the CR files, into {cf}\Crystal Decisions\2.0\bin, allows you to run multiple versions of Crystal Reports on the same machine.  (It will also help when troubleshooting.)

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The following is information from the Crystal Decisions Support Desk.
There are basically two types of export dlls:

u2d* - these are the export destination dlls, eg, exporting to disk,
exporting to application
u2f* and crxf* - these are the export format dlls

The dlls that start with crxf* are dependent on both crtslv.dll and
exportmodeller.dll.
Not all the export dlls get installed by default. In order to get every
single export dlls, you have to do a custom install and check every single
option you see under the export section.
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The Registry entry at the end is VERY important.  This came from CR9Deploy!  This must be run, to ensure your CR files are created.

We think we have covered it all.

Again, this is only to be used to assist your deployment.  Make sure you understand INNO Setup, ISTool and of course, Visual Basic.

We have provided this, to assist you in deployment, with the hopes of saving you the frustration we endured.

Good Luck.
