Crystal Reports 2011 on BI4 Platform - Oracle Drivers settings

[Former Member]

              I did this for the first time a few months ago and at that time this was quite a big challenge for me. The BI4 Platform is using a 64bit Oracle driver while Crystal Reports 2011 client is using a 32bit driver. Also, to VIEW a CR2011 on CMC, without the client being installed a 32bit driver is required  - How can you make both drivers work? Do you need both?

              Looking for answers on SAP Community Network made me realise that I wasn't the only one not being able to figure out why I was getting errors like "The viewer could not process an event. The database logon information for this report is either incomplete or incorrect. Error code:0 [CRWEB00000119]" when trying to view a Crystal Report in CMC or was unable to Add/Configure file DSN in ODBC Admin. However, I couldn't find a clear answer to my problem so, after managing to solve it (using the help of one of my colleagues) I decided to share my experience. Before I start it is worth mentioning that I was getting the data from a database server via ODBC. The solutio

               I don't think there is much point in creating a step-by-step guide on how to do this as, as I found out on my own skin, every situation is different and it is impossible to find a "one size fits all" solution. I will instead put together a checklist of things you should do/install to make CR2011 work on a ODBC connection.

        1.  Install the Oracle driver (I went for 11g, the latest one). I recommend installing the 64 bit as Admin and the 32 bit as Instant Client. If not using BI4 don't bother about the 64 bit one - just install the 32 driver as Administrator. If you need to install both remember that the order in which you install them is very important. Install the 64 bit Oracle driver first. Note:  information on how to completely remove older versions of Oracle drivers is easily available online.

·             2. Environmental variables (right click on Computer>Advanced) - I've seen loads of posts regarding this and I was actually thinking that the "trick" was to get the ORACLE_HOME(S) and PATH(S) right. This is just half true. You don't really need to set the ORACLE_HOME at all. Either leave it blank or delete it from Environmental Variables. All you need is the PATH to be set correctly (I've set up a PATH32 but it is not actually needed). Basically the Path needs to indicates where the oracle home is. CR is a 32 bit application so you need to have the 32 bit driver's location in here (as well as the other locations that get populated automatically). The Path needs to be pointing at the /BIN directory of wherever you installed the 32 bit driver (i.e. "C:\Oracle\...client_1\bin").

               3.   File DSN's: Open the file DSN with Notepad and check if it is looking at the 32 bit oracle home - this was really what made the difference even tho its a bit odd as I didn't have the CR2011 client (32bit) installed o tn the 64 bit box. If it isn't replace it with the oracle home of the 32bit driver. Apart from the driver, you can also change the database name or the user id but don't change any other rows in the file DSN. To see if it works try selecting the file DSN in ODBC Data Source Administrator (aka odbcad32.exe located on C:\WINDOWS\system32) - if you don't get an error it works!

              4.  Cystal Reports 2011: Make sure that the Database Configuration is correct (In CMC) - check if the report is looking at the right DSN file, has the correct username and the right password. You can also check if the connection works by going in Crystal and try creating a report which uses the new DSN connection. If the name of the server comes up when trying to connect then it will work.

              5. After making changes to the Environment variables or Oracle drivers make sure you restart SIA and also at the end restart the server. I would also suggest making a copy of the file DSNs before you start making changes to them

To summarize, even if this is not an universal solution it is worth going through this checklist: Driver, Environmental Variables, File DSNs, Crystal Reports 2011.

Please feel free to ask any questions at matt.toader@it-performs.com as I might be able to remember some other steps I didn't mentioned here.

Hopefully you'll find this helpful and thanks for reading! :wink:

MATT