2 solutions: unable to use Blob or Memo fields in Crystal

Yahoo Archive
1
Anton, you're a star, I have flat on my forehead from banging it on the wall
trying to find a way to this exact thing.

Thanks Chris Reed
PWSL


-----Original Message-----
From: it@... [mailto:it@...]
Sent: Monday 22 January, 2001 14:24
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] 2 solutions: unable to use Blob or Memo fields in
Crystal


To those of you who use Crystal with ODBC, and have hit the problem of
Crystal being unable to use a field of over 255 characters (memo or blob
field) in a formula, I have discovered 2 good solutions.


1 - I discovered this today, and it was right in front of my nose all along.
It's by far the simplest solution and I'd recommend it.

Go into the "Insert" menu in Crystal. Select "Create SQL Expression". From
here you can either do an RTrim, or more safely, do a "{fn
SUBSTRING((field.name),1,255)}" - this ensures that the field is no longer
than 255 characters.

>From there you can include the SQL expression in formulas.


2 - The second option is to edit the length of the field in question,
directly in the Progress database.

I recommend doing a search on Epicor's ERAnet for "memo fields" or some such
search string, to locate their instructions on this.

But for your information you will need to edit the Vantage session file
(vantage.vtg) according to those instructions and save the modified version
as a different file.

Create yourself a shortcut (and make sure only the right person has access
to it!) and run the program. This gets you into the database and you can
change the format of any field in Vantage.

In all honesty I'm not sure that this is necessary though. Using an SQL
Expression in Crystal is a much cleaner, safer solution.



Hope that helps!


Anton Wilson,
Systems Analyst,
Deanestor Healthcare
2
To those of you who use Crystal with ODBC, and have hit the problem of
Crystal being unable to use a field of over 255 characters (memo or blob
field) in a formula, I have discovered 2 good solutions.


1 - I discovered this today, and it was right in front of my nose all along.
It's by far the simplest solution and I'd recommend it.

Go into the "Insert" menu in Crystal. Select "Create SQL Expression". From
here you can either do an RTrim, or more safely, do a "{fn
SUBSTRING((field.name),1,255)}" - this ensures that the field is no longer
than 255 characters.

From there you can include the SQL expression in formulas.


2 - The second option is to edit the length of the field in question,
directly in the Progress database.

I recommend doing a search on Epicor's ERAnet for "memo fields" or some such
search string, to locate their instructions on this.

But for your information you will need to edit the Vantage session file
(vantage.vtg) according to those instructions and save the modified version
as a different file.

Create yourself a shortcut (and make sure only the right person has access
to it!) and run the program. This gets you into the database and you can
change the format of any field in Vantage.

In all honesty I'm not sure that this is necessary though. Using an SQL
Expression in Crystal is a much cleaner, safer solution.



Hope that helps!


Anton Wilson,
Systems Analyst,
Deanestor Healthcare