Re: Crystal Reports 8.5 with Oracle 9i

Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote:

>Adam Brasic wrote:
>
>> Dan-
>> Thanks for the reply- I appreciate it. Yes, I had been using IN
>> OUT REF cursors for all the SProcs that were being applied to my
>> reports, so I should be all right on that front.
>> However, as far as drivers are concerned, I was told by the DB team
>> at Crystal (and not just the help desk crew, I'm talking about Tier-2
>> personnel) that the native Crystal driver for Oracle connectivity is
>> only supposed to work for Oracle up to 8i. My issue is that I was
>> able to connect to the DB fine (using the native Oracle driver) for a
>> set amount of time (about 2 months), and then after a certain point
>> was unable to view all of the Sprocs that were present in the schema
>> (i.e. I could see the Sprocs that I had created up to a certain point,
>> but the most recently created SProcs would not show up under the list
>> of available data sources). In addition, in trying to create a new
>> blank report off of the sprocs that had already been succesfully tied
>> to a report (i.e. I knew that they worked), I consistenly received an
>> ORA-01001 error message. Checking the max cursor limit revealed that
>> I was well under the total amount of cursors that could concurrently
>> be open.
>> By switching to an ODBC driver, I was able to view ALL of the
>> stored procedures that were present in the DB; however, I wasn't able
>> to actually connect to any of the SProcs, as I received a "Invalid
>> string or buffer length" error message.
>> So, unless I'm doing something else grievously wrong, I am led to
>> believe that the DB team at Crystal isn't too far off the mark. I
>> tried an evaluation copy of CR 9.0 and was able to connect to my
>> Sprocs with no issue on the very first try.
>> Are there any new drivers or hotfixes that I should be aware that I
>> shouls apply to my install of CR 8.5? I've already installed SP 2,
>> and didn't see any hotfixes relating to any DB connectivity issues
>> with Oracle. Any input anyone has on the above is appreciated-
>>
>>
>> Adam
>
>Didn't realize you had an antique version of Oracle. Your problem then
>is the fact that you are trying to mix a very recent version of one
>product with an ancient, unsupported, version of another: Never a good
>idea. ODBC drivers are almost always problematic so I'd suggest leaning
>on them to upgrade Oracle.
>
>Beweare of Crystal 9. In fact just throw it away. First off you can't
>deploy reports created with Crystal 9 without spending thousands of
>dollars on app server software that is an entirely separate purchase ...
>bet they didn't tell you that ... the other reason is that Crystal 10
>will be released in the Spring. I think most people, myself included,
>who have had experience with Crystal 9 have returned it for a full
>refund and gone back to 8.5.

Hi,
I don't see any indication that Adam has an antique version of Oracle ( he states it is 9i ).

As for Crystal, both 8.5 and 9 need Crystal Enterprise ( or Crystal's RAS ) to deploy reports on the web, and it ( except for the mini version included with CR ) is a separate product ( has been since v8). I tend to agree about CE9 ( and maybe CR9, though it looks ok). I have not heard much good about it from those who moved from 8.5 - I will probably wait for 10 ( supposed to have shipped, or is being shipped, this week).

FWIW, I use The Native drivers for all Oracle/Crystal interaction, but do not use many SPs and none so far on our 9.2 instances. Received on Tue Jan 13 2004 - 09:21:24 CST