Create Reports with REST 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 REST brings this capability to Crystal Reports. This article shows how to create a report on REST data that refreshes when you run the report.

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

Connect to REST 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.

See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models REST APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML/JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

After setting the and providing any authentication values, set to "XML" or "JSON" and set to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

The property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

• Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your REST data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
• FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
• Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

See the Modeling REST Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

👁 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 REST 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 REST 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 REST 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 [ personal.name.first ] 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 REST data using SAP Crystal Reports and CData ODBC driver. Learn more about the CData ODBC Driver for REST and download a free trial from the CData ODBC Driver for REST page. Let our Support Team know if you have any questions.