Using Wildcard Parameters with Crystal Reports and Ripplestone

While working on the next version of Ripplestone, a client had asked about if and how Ripplestone will handle wildcard parameters in a Crystal Report.  I had not used wildcard parameters for a while, so I decided to dig in and build some reports with wildcard parameters and see how they worked when published to Ripplestone.

Creating the Crystal Report

For the report, I made a simple report that would have a parameter for a last name.  The report would use this parameter in the record selection and allow the user to enter wildcards in the format of “LY*” or “LY??” and have the report retrieve records for all the last names that either begin with LY or have four characters in the last name and they begin with LY.

To begin, I created the parameter with the settings to Allow custom values and Allow discrete values set to True.

Next I created the selection using the Select Expert and using the field called BillingLastName set the selection type to be “is like” and used the parameter called LastName as the value.

Running the report within Crystal Reports the user will get a parameter prompt and I entered the value of “LY*”.

The results from this simple report display all the records from the table where the last name begins with “LY”

Publish and Run the Report in Ripplestone

After creating the report in Crystal Reports, it is time to publish the report in Ripplestone and see how the wildcard parameters work.

Publishing the report was the same as any other report, select the report and give it a title click the Publish button.  Once the report was published I clicked the Run Report link and got the parameter page.  The page prompts for the last name and once again I entered “LY*” for the value.  Clicking the Run Report button will then pass the value to the report and the report will refresh the data for the report (in this case the data source was SQL Server) and display the report to the user within their web browser.

The report is returned as a pdf in the web browser.  The Crystal Report uses the wildcard parameter the same when running from Ripplestone as it does when running directly from the Crystal Report designer.