General FAQ

You can get an overview about support levels available for different i-net Crystal-Clear / i-net Clear Reports versions on our website.

The current version of i-net Clear Reports supports report definitions of Crystal Reports 7, 8, 8.5, 9, 10, 11 and 2008.

Via engine.setData(…), where the data can either be an object array or a result-set.
There are two possibilities, you can either set the data from within the checkProperties(Engine engine, …) call-back or you can write your own database class to provide the data.

The essential steps to write your own database class are:

1. create (invent) a dll name; for example foo.dll
2. create a class from a file Foo.java (see the sample (DataWithoutJDBC.java in the samples/jdbc folder of the documentation) and compile that with javac -classpath . DataWithoutJdbc.java
3. Visit crystalclear.properties and connect foo.dll to your Foo.class by adding the following lines (foo.dll maps to symbol FOO which defines the class property Foo (without .class extension):

   foo.dll=FOO
   FOO.class=Foo

4. run your report with http://...my.rpt&dll=foo.dll. It will use the data you provide.

No, i-net Clear Reports does not use any code or DLL from Crystal Reports?. You only need the Crystal Reports? Designer to create the report templates (rpt files). i-net Clear Reports is entirely written in the Java programming language and is platform independent..

The report engine i-net Clear Reports is compliant at least to Servlet specification version 2.2. You can select the Servlet specification during setup depending on your Servlet engine / application server.

Please note: You do not need a pds*.dll with i-net Clear Reports.

The Crystal Report? Designer uses DLL's for the connection to the database and saves the name of the used DLL in the *.rpt file at design time. The report engine i-net Clear Reports use the DLL name from Crystal Reports? to identify the JDBC driver that would be used for the database connection. The mapping between DLL name and JDBC driver is configured in the file crystalclear.properties.

E.g., the DLL name “pdsora7.dll” is mapped to the internal identifier “ora_inet”. This internal identifier identifies the JDBC driver for ORACLE in the following section of the crystalclear.properties:

…
oracle_inet.driver=com.inet.ora.OraDriver
oracle_inet.url=jdbc:inetora:{0}
oracle_inet.class=com.inet.report.DatabaseOracle
…

If you design a report template (rpt file) on the pdsora7.dll from Crystal Reports then i-net Clear Reports will use the JDBC driver that is configured for this DLL in the crystalclear.properties. If you want to use another database at runtime then you only need to specify the new values for the database parameters (dll, host, catalog, schema, user, password). For more information about these URL parameters please refer to the page: URL parameters.

You only need to add the jar file of the JDBC driver to the classpath of i-net Clear Reports:

e.g., C:\ClearReports>java -cp ./Auguro.jar;./core/ClearReports.jar;. com.inet.report.Listener (sample for i-net Clear Reports as Java application).

The maximum number of concurrent users that can view reports depends on the complexity of the reports (e.g. number and complexity of the formulas, number of summary fields, number of records fetched from the database, …) and on the server performance.

i-net Clear Reports can render approx. 1000 database objects per second on an 800 MHZ machine running WinNT.

Yes, if you use i-net Clear Reports as a servlet and your web server supports SSL. In this case you can use the HTTPS protocol in your browser, see: java.net.MalformedURLException: unknown protocol: https.

The report engine i-net Clear Reports and the i-net Clear Reports viewer are written entirely in the Java programming language. Therefore they can only use the fonts that the Java VM provides.

If you use the i-net Clear Reports viewer it is possible to use all loaded fonts (True Type Fonts) in the viewer. As prerequisite the TTF fonts need to be installed on the client machine and the value of the property “useNativeFonts” need to be true (see Configuration Manager).

The PDF export and the Java viewer supports the embedding of TrueType Fonts. In this case it is not necessary to install the TTF fonts on the client machine for report viewer and PDF export.

The directory that contains the TTF files need to be specified in the property FontPath (see Configuration Manager). It is not recommended to use the server font directory (e.g. C:/Windows/Fonts). Instead of this you should use a directory for the TTF files used with i-net Clear Reports (e.g. “C:/ClearReports/fonts” or ”/$HOME/Fonts/”).

Yes, barcode fonts are supported.

As prerequisite

• the Java viewer need to run in a Java2 compatible Java VM (e.g. Sun Java Plug-In 1.4.1),
• the font need to be installed on the client computer on that the viewer is running and
•  the value of the property “useNativeFonts” need to be true (see Configuration Manager).

If the value of the property “useNativeFonts” is false or the Java viewer is running in a JDK 1.1.x compatible Java VM and the name of the used barcode font contains the string “code” in it's name then the viewer use the font “BarCode1”.

If you like to use the barcode font in the PDF export then you should use the embedding of TTF fonts in PDF export. To do this you need to:

• create a font dir for i-net Clear Reports, e.g. “C:/ClearReports/fonts”
• copy the ttf file(s) of the barcode and other used ttf fonts in this directory
• set this directory in the property “fontPath” (see Configuration Manager).

Since version 3.2 i-net Crystal-Clear supports headless AWT and features better support for IBM's RAWT. Both headless awt and RAWT let you start server-side applications which need certain AWT functionality without providing a full featured graphics environment.

To enable headless AWT in the Sun Java VM you need JDK1.4 or above. Also, you must pass the option -Djava.awt.headless=true to the Java VM running i-net Clear Reports or your servlet engine or your application server. Please see the documentation of your servlet engine or application server for more information on how to enable headless awt.

For the standalone component, you can start i-net clear-reports for example:

java -Djava.awt.headless=true -classpath .;./core/ClearReports.jar;./JdbcDriver.jar com.inet.report.Listener

If you use the i-net Clear Reports servlet then you then you need to start the JVM of the servlet engine that is running the servlets with the Java runtime option ”-Djava.awt.headless=true”. For Tomcat servlet engine you can set the Java runtime option in the property “JAVA_OPTS” that you can set in the file catalina.bat.

i-net Crystal-Clear 3.2 also better supports IBM's RAWT. We have tested with rawt3-03.zip which can be downloaded from http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/remoteawtforjava.

On your windows machine you start the GUI server with the command: java -jar RAWTGui.jar

Then telnet to your server machine and execute the following command:

java -Xbootclasspath/p:RAWTAHost.jar -Dawt.toolkit=com.ibm.rawt2.ahost.java.awt.AHToolkit
-Djava.awt.printerjob=com.ibm.rawt2.ahost.java.awt.print.AHPrinterJob
-Djava.awt.graphicsenv=com.ibm.rawt2.ahost.java.awt.AHGraphicsEnvironment
-Djava.awt.printerjob=com.ibm.rawt2.ahost.java.awt.print.AHPrinterJob
-DRmtAwtServer=YOUR_WINDOWS_HOST .;./core/ClearReports.jar;./JdbcDriver.jar com.inet.report.Listener

Yes, if you install i-net Clear Reports as a report server application then it sends the viewer archive file (CC-Viewer.jar) to the browser (client) and you do not need a web server.

It is also possible to use the export functionality of i-net Clear Reports without a web server:

• start i-net Clear Reports as server application (Listener)
• request a report in the browser or in a Java application/applet and specify an output format in the init parameter: http://<servername>:9000?report=file:c:/MyReport.rpt&init=pdf

The highlight expert is just a specialization of Crystal's formula properties. For example if you want to vary the background of a field, please enter the format editor of the field, visit the “border” tab and click on the formula box of the background property. Then please enter a formula that looks like this:

if {?p0} < 10 then green else if {?p0} > 100 then red else silver

We will add the highlight expert in a future version of i-net Clear Reports. Until then, please use formula properties.

Yes, i-net Clear Reports supports Windows Vista and Windows 7. You can download the file “ClearReports_<version>_win.zip” that contains the setup.exe for Windows. With the setup.exe you can install i-net Clear Reports in the “Program Files” directory on Windows Vista and Windows 7, also if UAC (User Account Control) is enabled.

You can find the list of currently known problems in the Known problems on Windows Vista.

In order to use Failover and Load-Balancing, you can use i-net Clear Reports with an operating system cluster. Application server clusters can be used as well but only for load balancing since a session(either render or web front end session) cannot be persisted.