Introduction to the Crystal Report Engine

Crystal Reports is a powerful stand-alone report creation application, as well it provides a report writing module that you can add to your own applications. As a developer using C, C++, Visual Basic, ObjectVision, Turbo Pascal, Visual dBASE, Delphi, or any programming language that can access a DLL, you can add sophisticated report generating and printing capabilities to your applications without the time-consuming task of writing your own code.

The Crystal Report Engine is a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) that allows your applications to access the same powerful report printing features that are available in Crystal Reports. As a licensed user of Crystal Reports, you receive royalty-free rights to ship the Crystal Report Engine DLL (CRPE.DLL or CRPE32.DLL) and all of its support files with any application you create.

Note:    For more information regarding current runtime file requirements, see the Crystal Reports Developer Runtime Help (Runtime.hlp).

From your application, you can access the Crystal Report Engine through any of several Crystal Report Engine development tools:

When your application runs, it links with the Crystal Report Engine to access report writing functionality. Reporting can be simple, producing only a single report that is sent to a printer or preview window with no options available to the user, or it can be complex, allowing the user to change such things as record selection, sorting, grouping, or export options.



Seagate Software IMG Holdings, Inc.
http://www.seagatesoftware.com
Support services:
http://support.seagatesoftware.com