Chart from CSV datasource not appearing

Question

Hi,
I'm using CRXI in VS.NET 2005 on Vista32.
I get the feeling that maybe I've misunderstood something fundamental about how Crystal Reports can be used to bind to a report datasource at runtime. I know that I can set the datasource using the OLE Text Driver or as a DataSet:
public DataTable ParseCSV(string path)
            if (!File.Exists(path))
                return null;
            string full = Path.GetFullPath(path);
            string file = Path.GetFileName(full);
            string dir = Path.GetDirectoryName(full);
            //create the "database" connection string
            string connString = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;"
              + "Data Source=\"" + dir + "\\\";"
              + "Extended Properties=\"text;HDR=Yes;FMT=Delimited\"";
            //create the database query
            string query = "SELECT * FROM " + file;
            //create a DataTable to hold the query results
            DataTable dTable = new DataTable();
            //create an OleDbDataAdapter to execute the query
            OleDbDataAdapter dAdapter =
               new OleDbDataAdapter(query, connString);
            try
                //fill the DataTable
                dAdapter.Fill(dTable);
            catch (InvalidOperationException /*e*/)
            dAdapter.Dispose();
            return dTable;
And used as follows:
// Configuration.csvFileString is a full path to the CSV file
DataTable dt = ParseCSV(Configuration.csvFileString);
crDoc.Database.Tables[0].SetDataSource(dt);
crystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = crDoc;
crystalReportViewer1.RefreshReport();
But I see that when I set up a chart, the available fields shown are statically bound already, because without selecting a datasource first, the Report Designer won't do anything!
I can't see anywhere in the code behind the report where I can dynamically rebind the chart in the report, and I've never seen anything online (here in the CR forums or elsewhere) showing how to bind the datasource for a chart at runtime.
Am I doing this correctly? Have I missed something?
Thanks
Paul

Answer 1

I'm not 100% sure I understand the query, but here goes;
With Crystal Reports, you need to create the report first. You can then pass a dataset to it to reflect new data. As long as the dataset matches the structure of the data the report was created with, this should work. You could take your existing dataset, write it out to an XML and build the report off of that:
myDataset.WriteXml(xmlPath, XmlWriteMode.WriteSchema)
If you want to build a report at runtime, you will have to use RAS. For more information see the following resources:
http://devlibrary.businessobjects.com/BusinessObjectsXIR2SP2/en/devsuite.htm
C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Crystal Reports 11.5\Help\en\crsdk_samples_aspx\data\crsdk_net_tutorials_115_en.zip
C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Crystal Reports 11.5\Help\en\crsdk_net_doc\doc\crsdk_net_doc.chm
http://www.businessobjects.com/global/pdf/dev_zone/VS2005_Walkthroughs.pdf
https://smpdl.sap-ag.de/~sapidp/012002523100006252822008E/net_win_smpl.exe
https://smpdl.sap-ag.de/~sapidp/012002523100006252712008E/csharp_web_smpl.exe
https://smpdl.sap-ag.de/~sapidp/012002523100006252812008E/net_web_smpl.exe
RAS:
https://boc.sdn.sap.com/developer/library
http://devlibrary.businessobjects.com
https://boc.sdn.sap.com/dotnet/samples
Ludek