Deploying a Crystal Reports Application

Installing and configuring the Crystal Reports Server on your deployment machine

When installing a Crystal Reports Server on your deployment machine, you will be prompted to select the “installation type”:

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If you choose “Install MySQL database server”, you will need to provide user names and passwords for creating accounts on MySQL and CMS.  If you choose, “Using existing database server,” you will need to select a table from your existing Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or Microsoft Access database.  This table is used by CMS.  However, this choice is more complicated, so we recommend choosing “Install MySQL database server”.

After installing the Crystal Reports Server, you will see several applications allowing you to configure Crystal Reports Server from the start menu.  You are not required to do any configuration on these applications; however, you do need to go to Start à Business Objects à Central Configuration Manager and make sure all “Display Names” have a green icon.  A red icon indicates the Crystal Reports Server is not running properly.

Updating your report’s data sources for your production machine

When you deploy your application to production, make sure to alter the data source for any Crystal Reports report files included in your application.  Make these changes in the .RPT file created by Crystal Reports.  If you don’t update the data source for your Crystal Reports files, they may still refer to data sources present in your development machine even after you deploy your application to the production machine.  As a result, your Crystal Reports files cannot access your production database and will throw error messages such as “Unable to access data.”

Synchronizing Crystal Reports DLLs in your application and production machine

Before deploying your application, check that the same Crystal Reports DLLs are in both your application’s \bin folder and on the deployment machine.  If they contain different DLLs, then your application may not run properly since it references different DLLs than those available on the deployment machine.

Follow these steps if your application and your deployment machine contain different DLLs:

Step 1: Manually replace the Crystal Reports DLLs in your application’s \bin folder with the DLLs on your deployment machine.  If you installed Crystal Reports XI Release 2 Server in the default location, you should be able to find these DLLs at:

C:\Program Files\Business Objects\common\3.5\managed

Step 2: In Iron Speed Designer, create an MSI installer via the Deployment Wizard (Deploy, Deployment Wizard…).

Step 3: Restore the original Crystal Reports DLLs in your application’s \bin folder on your development machine.

If your development and deployment machines have the same Crystal Reports DLLs, you can skip steps 1 and 3.

Deploying your application to a production machine

You can deploy an Iron Speed Designer application using any of the normal deployment methods, including:

Configuring temp folder permissions

For Microsoft Windows 2003 installations, make sure the Network Service has read and write privileges to the windows/temp folder as below:

See Also

Creating a Crystal Reports Report File

Adding a Crystal Report to Your Iron Speed Designer Application

Adding Crystal Reports References to Your Project

Opening Crystal Reports PDF Files in Separate Browser Windows

Deploying a Crystal Reports Application

Compilation Errors