Crystal Reports Server 2008 Repository Database

Question

We've configured a new CRS 2008 server and have a "failed reports" report that worked in the old Crystal Enterprise 10 environment.   It would query the repository database CMS_InfoObjects table and report failed reports for the day.
With the new version of Crystal Reports Server 2008 and the new repository database, the ObjName field and others in this table are now varbinary fields.
How can we query this field like we did with the old version to get our "failed reports" report to work?
I can't really find any informatin on the structure, etc. or how to query the repository database.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, you can't query it directly from a report.  You have to use the query language that comes with the SDK.
I'm not sure whether CRS comes with the same Query Builder tool that comes with BusinessObjects, but if it does you can access it through a url like this: http://<server name>/AdminTools/querybuilder/ie.jsp.
To get the list of failed reports, you would run something like this query:
Select SI_NAME, SI_ID, SI_CREATION_TIME
from CI_INFOOBJECTS
where SI_INSTANCE = 1
  and SI_SCHEDULE_STATUS = 3
  and SI_CREATION_TIME >= '2010/08/19,00:00:00'
Unfortunately, there is no way to automate this with the Query Builder.  You would have to manually run this query every day to get the information you're looking for.
If you can write code in Visual Studio or Java (or have someone available who can do this), this type of thing is not difficult to do in the SDK.  You could handle it a couple of ways:
1.  Create a program that loads the information to a table in your database and then run a report in CRS that will show that data.
2.  Create a program that loads the data into memory and runs a report off of the in-memory data.
Either type of program could be set to run under the Windows Scheduler to automatically provide the information.
-Dell