Displaying a report in Java instead of using DHTML or ActiveX

Question

Post Author: karene
CA Forum: General
Greetings-
We have Crystal Reports XI release 2, and BusinessObjects XI release 2
We were using ActiveX to display our reports, and have switched to DHTML, which displays a more modern looking menu.  (There are probably other reasons, too).  But the ActiveX display behaves better: the menu at the top continues to display even when scrolling down the report, and the spacing matches what it looks like when printed.  Our customer is complaining about the DHTML report viewer, because the text is more squished together, and then there is a lot of white space.  The reports when printed look fine, but they often just view the report on the screen.  (And the menu scrolls off the screen when going to the bottom of the report.)
We're calling the reports using a URL that includes the OpenDocument.aspx and the document number from BusinessObjects.
I checked into the Java viewer, and it has the more modern menu, but it stays on the screen, and it also has the same spacing as the ActiveX viewer.  We think it should make the customer happy.  We've looked at the documentation, and it says to call the report using OpenDocument.jsp in the url. 
It won't work.  It tells us the report can't be found or the request completed (another guy did that part -- I'll ask him for the details if necessary). 
When we're in BusinessObjects, and displaying the report (whether by ActiveX, DHTML, or Java), the url at the bottom of the screen includes 'report_view.aspx'.  So we're wondering if there's something in BusinessObjects itself that we need to change in order to use the Java viewer.
I've googled and not found any references to this problem (which doesn't mean they aren't there, just that I haven't found them).  It seems odd that no-one would complain about the differences in display between the ActiveX and DHTML.  And it doesn't appear that anyone else is having problems using Java.  Can anyone give us some guidance?  Thank you.
-karene

Answer 1

From what I remember, there are just too many runtime dependencies (handling callbacks, asynchrony, etc) to use a web service control outside of a container.
As far as using clientgen within a project, I usually just have a separate build script to run clientgen when I need to, but you are correct, it certainly can be a pain.
There are in fact plans to make clientgen much easier from eclipse. I'm not at a level to speak to any details, schedules, etc., but if you have suggestions for how you'd like things to work, etc, please post them here.
-jacobd