To continue that idea of well-formed XML, indent each level with two spaces. Why is this important? In order to create well-formed XML which aligns properly, the font must maintain the same character size. The Report Header and Footer will serve as the opening and closing tags for our basic XML example.Ĭourier New 10pt is a great fixed width font. In this example, the Page Header and Page Footer are being suppressed to keep the nesting simple. The great thing about Crystal Reports in this situation is that any number of groupings can be applied to help aid in the nesting of your XML. XML may consist of many layers of nested elements, based on the requirements of the data. Let’s walk through an example of structuring a Crystal Report in a format conducive to creating an XML file from the Business Objects platform. Crystal Reports creates a great mechanism for defining an XML layout within a report that can help from getting data from point A (a data warehouse or mart) to point B, back into the required XML format. In the wild today, there are many types of XML schemas employed by proprietary architectures that make their data more portable through the use of XML.
While the Export to XML option allows for specification of a transform file (XSL/XSLT), another handy export option I value is Export to Text. XML (Extensible Markup Language) has had export support from Crystal Reports for quite a while.
CRYSTAL REPORT FILE EXTENSION HOW TO
This will be the first part of a series of blogs that illistrates how to flow data from Excel to Xcelsius using Crystal Reports and XML.