How to best talk to Crystal from VB
I've got a customer that will be developing reports in Crystal. They want me to launch them from a VB application that the user has on the desktop for maintaining the database.
This way we can control a "menu" of what Crystal reports are available to each user.
I'm thinking that Crystal saves the reports in .RPT files - so what are the options for actually running the report from within VB? Do we need to know where the .RPT files are? What about any questions the report needs to run - how do they get asked - does Crystal float up a modal box and ask for the parameters?
Once they are running the report, does a Crystal-like screen appear before them - or is that running completely in the back ground? Is it possible for them to change the selection criteria when the report runs? Possible for them to browse out to where the .RPT files are and circumvent the security of our application showing them what reports are available?
Thanks for any help you can offer.