Create Reports with Adobe Commerce Data in SAP Crystal Reports

Crystal Reports has many options for offloading data processing to remote data; this enables real-time reporting. The CData ODBC Driver for Adobe Commerce brings this capability to Crystal Reports. This article shows how to create a report on Adobe Commerce data that refreshes when you run the report.

Refer to the given table for the tools and versions used for this article:

Connect to Adobe Commerce Data

If you have not already, specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Adobe Commerce uses the OAuth 1 authentication standard. To connect to the Adobe Commerce REST API, obtain values for the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties by registering an app with your Adobe Commerce system. See the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the OAuth values and connecting.

You will also need to provide the URL to your Adobe Commerce system. The URL depends on whether you are using the Adobe Commerce REST API as a customer or administrator.

• Customer: To use Adobe Commerce as a customer, make sure you have created a customer account in the Adobe Commerce homepage. To do so, click Account -> Register. You can then set the URL connection property to the endpoint of your Adobe Commerce system.

• Administrator: To access Adobe Commerce as an administrator, set CustomAdminPath instead. This value can be obtained in the Advanced settings in the Admin menu, which can be accessed by selecting System -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Admin -> Admin Base URL.

  If the Use Custom Admin Path setting on this page is set to YES, the value is inside the Custom Admin Path text box; otherwise, set the CustomAdminPath connection property to the default value, which is "admin".

👁 Create the ODBC DSN connection.

When configuring the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Design a Report in SAP Crystal Reports

Follow the procedure below to use the SAP Crystal Reports tool to create the Adobe Commerce connection and Design a Report.

1. File -> New -> Standard Report. 👁 Create a standard report.
   
2. Expand the ODBC (RDO) node under Create New Connection and double-click on "Make a New Connection". Select CData Adobe Commerce Sys or any other source to prepare the report. Click on NEXT and FINISH. 👁 Data Source Selection
   
3. Configure the data source by selecting the tables needed in the report and clicking NEXT. 👁 Add the table.
   
4. You can also link tables from the Adobe Commerce data in SAP Crystal Reports. Click on NEXT after adding the links between tables. 👁 Add multiple tables.
   👁 Link the tables.
   
5. After the tables are selected, select the fields you want displayed in the report from the selected table, followed by NEXT. 👁 Add the fields to display.
   
6. Select the "Group By" field to group the information on the report. 👁 Add the Group By field.
   
7. Sort the groups based on summarised totals and click on NEXT. 👁 Group Sorting
   

Create a Chart

After selecting a column to group by, the Standard Report Creation Wizard presents the option to create a chart. Follow the steps below to create a chart aggregating the Name column's values.

1. In the Standard Report Creation Wizard, select the Bar Chart option and select the column you grouped by in the "On change of" menu.
2. In the Show Summary menu, select the summary you created.
3. Select filters and a template, as needed, to finish the wizard. 👁 Select a chart type.
   

Select a template for the report to preview the finished report and view the chart populated with your data.

👁 Select a template type.

The Final Report

You can now see that the report contains all the fields specified.

👁 The final report.

Working with Remote Data

To ensure that you see updates to data, click File and clear the "Save Data with Report" option. As you interact with the report, for example, drilling down to hidden details, Crystal Reports executes SQL queries to retrieve the data needed to display the report. To reload data you have already retrieved, refresh or rerun the report.

You can offload processing onto the driver by hiding details elements and enabling server-side grouping. To do this, you need to select a column to group by in the report creation wizard.

1. Click File -> Report Options and select the "Perform Grouping On Server" option. 👁 Perform Grouping On Server option.
   
2. Click Report -> Section Expert and select the Details section of your report. Select the "Hide (Drill-Down OK)" option. 👁 Hide (Drill-Down OK) option.
   

When you preview your report with the hidden details, Crystal Reports executes a GROUP BY query. When you double-click a column in the chart to drill down to details, Crystal Reports executes a SELECT WHERE query that decreases load times by retrieving only the data needed.

At this point, you have created a SAP Crystal report built on top of live Adobe Commerce data using SAP Crystal Reports and CData ODBC driver. Learn more about the CData ODBC Driver for Adobe Commerce and download a free trial from the CData ODBC Driver for Adobe Commerce page. Let our Support Team know if you have any questions.