<p>+I work for SAP Business Objects, in Technical Customer Assurance. My speciality is the Software Development Kits (SDKs) that we provide with our Business Intelligence products - BusinessObjects Enterprise, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence, Crystal Reports and Crystal Xcelsius. </p><p>In my blog, I'm going to discuss subjects that I personally find interesting - little known or not-well-documented corners of the SDK, new functionality or new SDKs, or interesting issues that I've come across in a SAP Incident or SAP Developer Network forums. </p><p>You're more than welcome to suggest any topic (SAP Business Objects SDK related, of course...) that you'd like me to discuss - I have a dozen or so items on my blog to-do list, but I'm always on the hunt for anything interesting with our SDKs.+ </p>
A short blog describing how you can simplify the management of XML export formats with Crystal Reports 2008.
If you're using the new Crystal Reports 2008 XML Export functionality to customize the export format via a XSL Transformation file, then this blog would be of interest to you.
h5. New Crystal Reports 2008 XML Export Functionality
One of the great new features of Crystal Reports 2008 is greater control over the formatting of XML exports. You can create a XSL Transformations (XSLT) file that defines translation of Crystal Reports elements to export elements, import the XSLT into a Crystal Report in the Designer, and then select it to be applied when exporting the report to XML.
The report 'XML Exporting.rpt' file, included in the samples available here on the BusinessObjects donwload site, gives a example of a XSLT that transforms Crystal Reports into a simple HTML format (if the download links are broken, try going to https://www.sdn.sap.com and click on "Business Objects" then "Business Objects Downloads", then select "Crystal Reports - 2008 - Samples" and choose "Crystal Reports 2008 sample reports - Features"). Manage XML Exporting Formats...). The xsl:include element is instructing the XML engine to import the file 'my_cr_xslt.xsl' found on my desktop. <xsl:include href="http://tueda-bexir2s2.crystald.net:8080/bexir2/XSLT/my_cr_xslt.xsl" />
and import that into my Crystal Reports, then deploy the 'my_cr_xslt.xsl' to my Web Server.
A commonly accessible location from which I can control the XML Export formats of multiple reports, on multiple machines!
I call it 'Unmanaged XML Export Formatting', since the XSL isn't being managed by the Crystal Reports Designer or BusinessObjects Enterprise.
Enjoy!
