How to best talk to Crystal from VB

[szlamany]

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.

[RobDog888]

szlamany, what version of CR are they using? If threy are using
the developer version then there is a runtime.hlp file which
describes all the controls, dlls, and references required for each
function used in CR. Yes you do need to know the location of
each report in order to open one. You can directly print a report
from an ADO recordset or use the CR Viewer control to display
the report. There is a parameter collection which you can use to
pass parameters to a report or display a prompt to enter each
parameter. Yes you can change the selectionformula at runtime
or just use an ado recordset and set it as the reportsource.

HTH

[szlamany]

Can we remain at the level of simply "supplying" a drop down box of report options (from a table in our DB - storing "name" of report and "location\report.rpt") - then call to Crystal with the .RPT file and have it do the "ask the users questions" and handle the output part?

If we go that route - are they simply in a "report output" mode or can they sneak somehow into design mode, or select a different .RPT file from the one we supplied?