While not addressing your specific question I can say we successfully use BO's with Crystal Reports. We went through the process of looking at Sharp Shooter and the DevExpress report writer (we use DevExpress for our UI) and decided to stay with Crystal Reports because it was the only tool of the three that gave us the functionality we needed in Cross Tab (Pivot) reports.

Cheers, Peter

You need to use the Custom BBS not just the BBS.  This was released in 1.6.6 and allows you to create reporting BOs as well as wrap any BO without the need for dropping on a BBS.  I think I have already mentioned this on another post, but if you would download and install the StrataFlix sample it will show you exactly how to do this.

This post might help you:

http://forum.strataframe.net/FindPost19805.aspx

Dustin Taylor (10/10/2008)

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Yep! Just add that toolbox attribute as Ivan pointed out and you should be able drag it in from your toolbox .

Hi Dustin,

I am working on creating reports, and have been using the "SF Custom Business Binding Source" template, and manually adding the toolbox attribute, is there a configuration somewhere which will add this attribute by default?

By the way, thanks a lot to Ivan and the StrataFlix sample which has helped me a lot in getting started with .NET reporting, specially the Report Sharp-Shooter, and the generic logic in StrataFlix to generate the reports, very clever.

You are most welcome!

We create and manage the custom BBSs in code, which we find cleaner (and less blue coggy), but you can always make your own template based off of our standard BBS item template and modify it to include the toolbox attribute.

Understand and it is reasonable, but then there must be something I am missing, for example to design the reports, I drop a ReportManager into the form where the report will be called, then I drop an instance of the reports BBS in the same form, so I can create the report's Data Sources and design the report, is there any other way to do this that would not required all my report's BBS to have the ToolBox attribute?

Please see the attached image.

The long drawn out part is what we actually do in our medical software.  We actually design all of our reports at run-time after we have designed the data sources, etc.  This allows us to change and create reports in the field.  In this case, we define the data sources, and then they become available as a data source selection at run-time.  So all of our reports are stored in a database instead of in a code file.  Now the BBSs, data sources, report criteria forms, etc. are all in code, obviously.  But the actual report itself is data stored and driven.

You can see all of the reports available here in our report designer.  I can add a new report, template, etc.  all through the run-time interface.  When I create a report, I can then select the report and set the data source:

This is a BBS that gets associated with the report when run.  So in this case, when we open the designer within the template we create and expose the data sources to the Report Sharp-Shooter report and design controls so that they can be accessed and referenced just as though they were dropped on a form.

Within the designer, you can see all of the elements associated with the data source and just drag and drop them onto the report:

Finally, before the question comes up, we really cannot give this to you or pre-plumb this as it is really specific to our medical application and our needs.  Most likely, you do not need anything this elaborate so it would be overkill for most developers.  However, we have very complex and specific needs so we had to take this approach so that it allows our users to copy over the default templates and change every report in the application.  Also, for us to provide this as an app or module to purchase like RBS, it would get really complex and muddy as this is part application, but also part customized.  So it is really entrenched into our medical app.  But this should at least help you understand Dustin's comment and understand how to take a different data driven approach if you have this need.

Darn, I knew you would say something like that .

Seriously, thanks, it does explain many things, and you are right, that kind of flexibility is not always needed by the end user.  So in my case it would be safe to do one of the following:

1. Design reports as I am doing, in the form where they will be called, and then remove the reports BBS from this form and the toolbox attributes since once the report is complete, they would not be used unless I need to add or change a field?
2. Or, could I create a ReportManager subclass in a temporary form used to just create all reports, then in each forms where the reports would be used, create an instance of that ReportManager subclass to use the report?

If number 2 can be done, I would prefer that path, since I notice that in the ReportManager you can have many reports and many Data Sources to assign to those reports, this way, I would have some sort of centralization at least to create the reports.