There is a barely documented problem with Crystal Reports for .NET that occurs if you try to pass a dataview as a datasource to a report. The report has been built via a project dataset (XSD).

Here is the tech support entry. It has a tracking id of “CR ADAPT00117088”. I probably don’t have the latest patch but there is no reference anywhere else to this track id.

The work around is just to pull the dataview data into a new datatable. Crystal doesn’t give a sample so here is one for anyone who may be looking.

First here is the long way around if you need a table to move into a dataset.

Dim tbl As DataTable = myDataView.Table.Clone
Dim iRow As Int32
For iRow = 0 To dv.Count – 1
    tbl.ImportRow(dv.Item(iRow).Row)
Next
mycrystalreport.SetDataSource(tbl)  ‘this assumes you only have one table for your datasource

(I need to make a confession – I have been so stung by the problem of trying to move a table from one dataset into another that I didn’t stop and think that I was sending a datatable not a dataset, so I did this the long way around. Thanks to Mike below for pointing out my silliness…see his comment for the easy way.)

Interesting post from 2003 PASS track chair, Roman Rehak, on the evals from the conference. Besides been a .NET developer, Roman is an absolute whiz with SQL Server and has been doing a lot of talks for developers on what they should really know about working with SQL Server. Keep an eye on his weblog for some great pointers and insights – and occasional recipes. He happens to be an awesome cook – I have been fortunate to partake in some of his wonderful meals.

Cannot figure out why I suddenly have to manually code in controls.add and controls.setchildindex when trying to add controls to an inherited form I haven’t added anything to in a while. Strange and annoying.

Steve Smith, Mr. ASPAlliance etc is coming to speak to the Vermont.NET User Group on Monday night, Feb 9th and then he is on to Montreal for the GUVSM.NET User Group on Tuesday night. His Tuesday night talk in Montreal is an INETA sponsored event. Monday is a Julie & Rich’s Bed & Breakfast sponsored event. Steve is coming (sans Michelle boo hoo) on Saturday and we are going to have some Vermont fun with him. I have decided not to make him ski since I don’t want to be blamed for broken bones. We will take Steve snowshoeing in the Green Mountains as we have done with Chris Kinsman and Stephen Forte before. Steve is going to do a presentaion on Caching in ASP.NET and Whidbey. I (and many) are really looking forward to this.