Creating the Reports Form

The Reports form contains four radio buttons. Clicking on any radio button generates the corresponding report. To add functionality to these radio buttons, perform the following steps:

1.Double-click on the first radio button to open the code window.

On selecting this radio button, a user should be able to view the ConsumableForm form that contains the report of the consumable products used in a month.

2.To display the ConsumableForm form, add the following code to the

CheckedChanged event of radioButton1.

private void radioButton1_CheckedChanged(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

{

ConsumableForm newForm = new ConsumableForm(); newForm.Show();

this.Hide();

}

The previous code displays ConsumableForm when the user selects the first radio button. However, you have not yet created the crystal report. The following section discusses how to create cr ystal reports.

Creating Crystal Reports

As discussed earlier, Visual Studio .NET provides you with the Crystal Report Gallery that consists of several standard wizards called Report Experts. These Report Experts enable you to create crystal reports easily and efficiently. The Crystal Report Gallery also provides you with the option of creating a crystal report by using a blank report or an existing report. In this section, you will learn to create a crystal report by using Report Expert. To open the Crystal Report Gallery, perform the following steps:

1.In the Solution Explorer window, right-click the name of the project, Customer Maintenance Project.

2.From the displayed list, point to the Add option and then select the Add New Item option.

The Add New Item dialog box is displayed.

Table 11-1 lists various Report Experts in the Crystal Report Gallery dialog box.

Table 11-1 The Report Experts

TIP

You can see a preview of various Report Experts in the Preview window.

Creating Crystal Reports Using

the Standard Report Expert

In this section, you will be creating a crystal report by using a Standard Report Expert. The next steps continue with the procedure for creating reports.

6.In the Choose an Expert group box of the Crystal Report Gallery dialog box, select the Standard option and click on the OK button.

The Data tab of Standard Report Expert is displayed.

244Project 1 CREATING A CUSTOMER MAINTENANCE PROJECT

7.Click on the plus (+) sign adjacent to the OLE DB [ADO] option.

The OLE DB (ADO) dialog box is displayed. Alternatively, you can double-click on the OLE DB [ADO] option to open the OLE DB (ADO) dialog box.

8.In the OLE DB Provider page, select the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server option and click on the Next button.

The Connection Information page is displayed. You use this page to enter information required to set up a connection with a data source.

9.In the Server: combo box, select the name of the server containing the database from the drop-down list.

You can also type the name of the server in the combo box. In this page, you can specify the authentication mode to connect to a SQL server.

10.Select the name of the database as CMS from the Database: combo box and click on the Finish button.

Standard Report Expert creates a connection with the CMS database.

11.Double-click on the CMS database to display a list of tables in the database.

12.Select the table tblJobDetails from the available list and click on the Insert Table button.

The tblJobDetails table is now displayed in the Tables in report: list.

13.Click on the Next button.

The Fields tab is displayed. This page contains a list of all the fields in the tblJobDetails table. You can select the fields that you want display in your report.

14.From the list of fields, select the JobDate, Tires, Weights, OilChanged,

OilFilter, GearOil, Point, Condenser, Plug, FuelFilter, and AirFilter

fields and click on the Add button.

The fields that you have selected appear in the Fields to Display: list. You can use the Up Arrow or Down Arrow buttons to increase or decrease the level of display of the fields.

The name of the field appears in the Column Heading: text box. You can edit the name of a field by selecting the field and changing the text in the Column Heading: text box.

15.Click on the Next button to proceed.

The Group tab is displayed. This page contains information about the field that you want to use to group data. The records in the tblJobDetails table are sorted on the basis of the Group By: field.

16.From the Available Fields: list, select the JobDate field and click on the

Add button.

The JobDate field appears in the Group By: list. You can also specify the sort order of the records in the Sort Order: list box.

17.In the Break: list box, select the for each month option.

The records in the tblJobDetails table will be grouped for each month. This will help the user to view monthly data of the consumable items in the Monthly Consumables report.

18.Click on the Next button.

The Total tab of Standard Report Expert is displayed. In this page, you can select the fields for which you want to create summarized information. By default, all the fields are selected. You can either add or remove a field by selecting the field and clicking on the Add or Remove button, respectively. The Total tab provides you with a Summary Type: list box, which contains the items that you can select to display the type of summary information. Because you need to know the total number of products consumed within a specified month, choose the summary type Sum.

19.Check the Add Grand Totals check box and click on the Next button.

The Top N tab is displayed. You can specify the name of the field based on which one you want to sort the groups. This is optional information and you may choose to click on the Next button without specifying any information in this page.

20.Click on the Next button to display the Chart tab.

The Chart page provides you with several options for including a graph in your report.

21.Click on the Style button if you do not want to include a chart.

The Style tab is displayed. You can select the formatting style of the report and specify a title in this page. Standard Report Expert provides you with several formatting styles for displaying your report. You can see the preview of a style in the preview window.

246Project 1 CREATING A CUSTOMER MAINTENANCE PROJECT

22.In the Title: text box, type the name of the report as Consumable Report.

23.From the Style: list, select the Standard option and click on the Finish option to create the crystal report.

Figure 11-2 displays the report as created by the Crystal Report Galler y.

FIGURE 11-2 Consumable Report

If you want, you can make changes to the layout of the report. However, this report does not display the data. To make the data available to users, you need to host the crystal report by using a Windows Forms Viewer control.

Windows Forms Viewer Control

As discussed earlier, a Windows Forms Viewer control provides you with a means to host and display the data in a report. The Windows Forms Viewer control is available in the Windows Forms toolbox and can be included in a Windows form. Figure 11-3 shows a Windows Forms Viewer control.