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REPORT WRITERS
Running Crystal Reports Web Component Server with Domino R5 via CGI
By Jennifer Regnault
In parts one and two of this series, I covered the basics of setting up your Domino R5 server to run as a Seagate Crystal Reports 8 Web Server, as well as how to create and execute reports through the Web server itself. In this final installment, I'll demonstrate some more advanced techniques, including passing URL commands, running selection formulas, and enhancing overall server performance.
URL commands
URL commands allow developers to pass specific commands with a report request in order to customize the data returned. They also allow other options, such as choosing the viewer used to retrieve the end-user's report into the browser. Essentially, the command is passed via a simple append to the end of the URL address, which is comprised of a question mark (?) and then the appropriate URL command to be executed by the Web server.
The first type of URL command is fairly basic and concerns security and logons to data sources used by Web reports. Instead of requiring users to provide the logon for a database, you can pass this via a URL command, as follows:
PASSWORD# & USER# Commands
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If you don't pass a password via a URL command, the end-user will be prompted at report runtime to supply logon information for the data sources used within the report.
PASSWORD# is combined with USER# to allow logons to password protected databases. The syntax would be as follows:
PASSWORD#=<password>
USER# = <userids>
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In both cases, the information being passed is a string. In my example below, I have an SQL (Structured Query Language) Server 7 database whose general reporting login is a username of "reporter" with a password of "crystal."
User0=reporter&password0=crystal
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It's entirely possible that you might have a Web report that's comprised of queries to several different databases. If this is the case, you can pass multiple user and passwords by incrementing the index number. For example:
User0=reporter&password0=crystal&user1=testing&password1=domino
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The only requirement you need to keep in mind for this technique is that you list the user names and passwords in the order in which the data sources appear in your report.
Record selection
Now that we've logged onto our data source, let's look at specifying the data subset. Generally, a developer will specify a report's selection formula right within the report. However, you can choose to do this via a URL command. The syntax for passing a selection formula is as follows: SF=<formula>.
The formula must be passed in string format. For example, here I have a URL that selects records whose factory location is Virginia: http://myserver/manufacture.rpt?sf={location.Location}+3d+";Virginia".
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