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Chapter 10: Data Sources and the Database Expert
Overview
Organizations spend a great deal of time and money building databases and storing enormous amounts of data in them. For new and old development projects alike, resources have often focused on creating database structures that capture the essential data needed by the company. Today, that data is plentiful and it is spread all over the organization. The days of a single database containing a company’s data came and went in the blink of an eye. Most, but not all, stored data exists in databases. Some exists as simple text files. This is why we use the phrase data source more universally than the word database. Crystal Reports can report on data from almost any data source, whether it is a text file or a complex database. Companies have data stored in a wide variety of formats coming from storage locations that weren’t even dreamed of ten years ago.One of the problems with having data stored in multiple places is that the people who need to connect to and retrieve the data are generally not the people who stored the data in the first place. This can mean a large learning curve for those attempting to figure out how to retrieve data from each different kind of data source. As people come and go from an organization, it can impact the organization’s ability to harvest its information in a productive manner. Crystal Reports can play a key role in addressing this issue. The connectivity capabilities built into Crystal Reports are designed to make it as easy as possible to connect to a wide variety of data storage locations.Featured in this chapter:
Understanding Crystal connectivity
Configuring and using ODBC data sources
Working with OLE DB
Connecting to OLAP data sources
Using native data sources
