I'm upgrading alot of my old Crystal Reports-based programs to .NET and decided to attempt to convert these to telerik's reporting control.
There are a few things I've encountered that I haven't been able to figure out with the Q2 2007 release of this control. The import tool works well enough to get the initial format, but it has a few specialized things it doesn't pick up.
If a section has no data, it needs to be not visible. This way an invoice can have different sections that only appear when they have data.
I need to have data fields in the header and/or footer. It would be nice for the converter to have warned that it doesn't work. If not this, I need to be able to set a section to always start a certain distance down the page. This is important for the bottom of our invoices.
If I can't have data fields in the header, I need to be able to use the page number anywhere on the page.
Any help on these issues is appreciated.
There are a few things I've encountered that I haven't been able to figure out with the Q2 2007 release of this control. The import tool works well enough to get the initial format, but it has a few specialized things it doesn't pick up.
If a section has no data, it needs to be not visible. This way an invoice can have different sections that only appear when they have data.
I need to have data fields in the header and/or footer. It would be nice for the converter to have warned that it doesn't work. If not this, I need to be able to set a section to always start a certain distance down the page. This is important for the bottom of our invoices.
If I can't have data fields in the header, I need to be able to use the page number anywhere on the page.
Any help on these issues is appreciated.
9 Answers, 1 is accepted
0
Hello Paul,
The Crystal Reports converter is designed to eliminate the tedious task of creating, placing and styling numerous report items on your new report. Since the object model of CR11 is quite different than that of Telerik Reporting, there are some aspects of the original report, that simply cannot be converted properly. We have done our best to make the converter respect the original Crystal Report settings as much as possible.
The converter processes design-time layout only. It has no way of knowing whether a certain section will have data or not at run-time. Nevertheless, you can attach to the section's ItemDataBound event and make it or its children invisible (Visible=false) if there is no data in the current data row.
In Telerik Reporting, data fields in the ReportHeader and ReportinFooter implicitly show data from the first data row in the data source, since they occur only once per report. If that is what you need, then you can place data-bound items in the Report Header/Footer.
PageNumber and PageCount can only be used in a PageHeader/PageFooter.
Thank you for your feedback. This version of the converter is definitely not the last one and we will be improving it constantly in order to match our customers' needs.
Best wishes,
Ross
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center
The Crystal Reports converter is designed to eliminate the tedious task of creating, placing and styling numerous report items on your new report. Since the object model of CR11 is quite different than that of Telerik Reporting, there are some aspects of the original report, that simply cannot be converted properly. We have done our best to make the converter respect the original Crystal Report settings as much as possible.
The converter processes design-time layout only. It has no way of knowing whether a certain section will have data or not at run-time. Nevertheless, you can attach to the section's ItemDataBound event and make it or its children invisible (Visible=false) if there is no data in the current data row.
In Telerik Reporting, data fields in the ReportHeader and ReportinFooter implicitly show data from the first data row in the data source, since they occur only once per report. If that is what you need, then you can place data-bound items in the Report Header/Footer.
PageNumber and PageCount can only be used in a PageHeader/PageFooter.
Thank you for your feedback. This version of the converter is definitely not the last one and we will be improving it constantly in order to match our customers' needs.
Best wishes,
Ross
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center
0

pdlove
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answered on 20 Sep 2007, 11:59 AM
You've done an excellent job on the converter.
The whitespace issue is for whole sections. If none of the fields in the section have data, then don't show the section. This feature of course should be able to be disabled.
My other question on the Report header was badly worded. The original Crystal has data used in the page header and page footer. I've almost duplicated this format using the groups, but on the original report, it always puts the customer address in the bottom using the page footer. So what would be nice is if I can define a section that always starts at 7-inches down the page, or is always at the bottom of the page. Is there any way to do anything like this with the current version?
The whitespace feature I can work around. This other feature I cannot. If I need to send any kind of example then please let me know.
The whitespace issue is for whole sections. If none of the fields in the section have data, then don't show the section. This feature of course should be able to be disabled.
My other question on the Report header was badly worded. The original Crystal has data used in the page header and page footer. I've almost duplicated this format using the groups, but on the original report, it always puts the customer address in the bottom using the page footer. So what would be nice is if I can define a section that always starts at 7-inches down the page, or is always at the bottom of the page. Is there any way to do anything like this with the current version?
The whitespace feature I can work around. This other feature I cannot. If I need to send any kind of example then please let me know.
0
Hi,
We have carefully examined your particular needs and we will certainly have them in mind when further developing the Crystal Converter.
However, there are certain restrictions that are imposed by our specific design and implementation of the report generation engine. One such restriction is that fields from the data source cannot be used in the Page Header and Footer sections. The reason is that the paging process is a responsibility of the different rendering formats (HTML, Image, PDF, Excel, CSV) and this happens when the data has been already processed by the report processor unit.
Due to the great differences of the two reporting models and overall design, there will always be cases when a literal conversion will not produce the desired result out of the box and additional tuning will be needed. You can try to divide your report into two parts. The data that you used to display in the Crystal Page Header and Footer can be moved to the detail section and between them you can place a sub-report item, that will show a report containing what you used to display in the Crystal Report body. Then you can play with the sub-report height so that everything goes to its desired location. That is just one suggestion.
We realize that this is somewhat restrictive and we are currently looking for the best way to overcome it.
Kind regards,
Ross
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center
We have carefully examined your particular needs and we will certainly have them in mind when further developing the Crystal Converter.
However, there are certain restrictions that are imposed by our specific design and implementation of the report generation engine. One such restriction is that fields from the data source cannot be used in the Page Header and Footer sections. The reason is that the paging process is a responsibility of the different rendering formats (HTML, Image, PDF, Excel, CSV) and this happens when the data has been already processed by the report processor unit.
Due to the great differences of the two reporting models and overall design, there will always be cases when a literal conversion will not produce the desired result out of the box and additional tuning will be needed. You can try to divide your report into two parts. The data that you used to display in the Crystal Page Header and Footer can be moved to the detail section and between them you can place a sub-report item, that will show a report containing what you used to display in the Crystal Report body. Then you can play with the sub-report height so that everything goes to its desired location. That is just one suggestion.
We realize that this is somewhat restrictive and we are currently looking for the best way to overcome it.
Kind regards,
Ross
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center
0

pdlove
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answered on 21 Sep 2007, 01:01 PM
Sounds good to me. I got preliminary approval to change the invoices slightly to a format that can easily be handled by your report generator. I understand about the page header and footer data issue why it isn't going to be possible. So my final suggestion from this discussion is to have the ability to hide entire sections if all the data fields are NULL that are in it, and be able to set the absolute inches down a page that a given section will start at. This would be usefull for generating remittance slips at the bottom of bills and other similar projects.
Keep up the good work and I hope to see these changes down the road.
Paul
Keep up the good work and I hope to see these changes down the road.
Paul
0
We will consider your suggestions for implementation, Paul. By the way, you can hide your section by attaching to its ItemDataBound event, checking the data that concerns you and setting its Visible property to false when appropriate.
Thanks again for the great feedback.
All the best,
Ross
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center
Thanks again for the great feedback.
All the best,
Ross
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center
0

Yuvika
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answered on 12 Mar 2009, 07:08 AM
Hi.
I have created a report in which I have used a subreport on the group footer section, I want this subreport on the page footer, but page footer does not allow to have the subreport in that section.so I added it in group footer.
I want this group footer to display with the page footer(close to page footer). what trick I have used for it is I have created a panel in footer and has set its dock to botton of its container group footer. And tried to set the height of the group footer dynamically as the page size is subracted and the number of rows in detail section is calculated , this gives me the height for the group footer.
I can't fix the height of the detail section as I have created table layout, so I have to caluclate the height of detail section on any event of report dynamically. So what I am trying to do is set the height of the group footer so it attaches with the page footer.
My below Code works well for the report with one page as I have used the record count to calculate the height of detail section(each row with height 0.21inch).But after the report gets more records the height increases more than what is required and the sub report is not visible.
What I want is to find the number of records displaying currently on the current page of report instead of my dataset record count.
I have created a report in which I have used a subreport on the group footer section, I want this subreport on the page footer, but page footer does not allow to have the subreport in that section.so I added it in group footer.
I want this group footer to display with the page footer(close to page footer). what trick I have used for it is I have created a panel in footer and has set its dock to botton of its container group footer. And tried to set the height of the group footer dynamically as the page size is subracted and the number of rows in detail section is calculated , this gives me the height for the group footer.
I can't fix the height of the detail section as I have created table layout, so I have to caluclate the height of detail section on any event of report dynamically. So what I am trying to do is set the height of the group footer so it attaches with the page footer.
My below Code works well for the report with one page as I have used the record count to calculate the height of detail section(each row with height 0.21inch).But after the report gets more records the height increases more than what is required and the sub report is not visible.
What I want is to find the number of records displaying currently on the current page of report instead of my dataset record count.
Double dHeight = 10 - (Convert.ToDouble(0.21 * Convert.ToDouble(dsPO_BudgetDAL.Tables[0].Rows.Count)) + 4.14);
groupFooterSection1.Height =
new Unit(dHeight, Telerik.Reporting.Drawing.UnitType.Inch);
Any help to find the height of detail section dynamically of one current page of report is appreciated.
Thanks
Yuvika
0
Hi Yuvika,
The short answer to your inquiry would be - this is not possible. The calculation of the pages and how many items fit onto a current page (all the layout and positioning processing) occurs in the report rendering, where it is too late for any custom changes.
If there was a way to shift down the group footer to imitate page footer, we would have done it out of the box, but that is not its purpose.
Thank you for the understanding.
Greetings,
Steve
the Telerik team
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The short answer to your inquiry would be - this is not possible. The calculation of the pages and how many items fit onto a current page (all the layout and positioning processing) occurs in the report rendering, where it is too late for any custom changes.
If there was a way to shift down the group footer to imitate page footer, we would have done it out of the box, but that is not its purpose.
Thank you for the understanding.
Greetings,
Steve
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions on the new Telerik Support Portal.
Check out the tips for optimizing your support resource searches.
0

Yuvika
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answered on 12 Mar 2009, 02:38 PM
Hi Steve,
Is't there any way to give illusion to end user that the group footer is near page footer.???.
Please visit the below link, here the client wants the revisions on the page end, not on the group end. For the triangles and revision text I have created a subreport which I am binding with the revision history data.
I can manage it on one page data by caluclating the number of records returned, but when the record count increases the report goes to second page and then the height of group footer section I can't calculate.
For the detailed view of report please see the following link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/lVd31YDancIyTPORZrwPaQ?feat=directlink
The footer has a subreport in this that I have in my telerik group footer section.
Reply.
Thanks
Yuvika
Is't there any way to give illusion to end user that the group footer is near page footer.???.
Please visit the below link, here the client wants the revisions on the page end, not on the group end. For the triangles and revision text I have created a subreport which I am binding with the revision history data.
I can manage it on one page data by caluclating the number of records returned, but when the record count increases the report goes to second page and then the height of group footer section I can't calculate.
For the detailed view of report please see the following link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/lVd31YDancIyTPORZrwPaQ?feat=directlink
The footer has a subreport in this that I have in my telerik group footer section.
Reply.
Thanks
Yuvika
0
Hi Yuvika,
Currently the group footer sections if set to print on every page, always follow the last detail on the page and unfortunately there is no way to change this behavior. Anyway I have logged this request in our TODO list so we will consider it for subsequent versions.
All the best,
Steve
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions on the new Telerik Support Portal.
Check out the tips for optimizing your support resource searches.
Currently the group footer sections if set to print on every page, always follow the last detail on the page and unfortunately there is no way to change this behavior. Anyway I have logged this request in our TODO list so we will consider it for subsequent versions.
All the best,
Steve
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions on the new Telerik Support Portal.
Check out the tips for optimizing your support resource searches.