Select expert - 'A string is required here'

Question

Post Author: greg_zen
CA Forum: Formula
Hi All,
in select expert I put code like below:
1)
'{sp.ContractNo} like {?ContractNo}' 
          where ?contractNo is a parameter declared as a 'string'
It worked fine with Crystal Enterprise 10 SP3
After coping all reports and stored procedures to another server and installing SP6  for Crystal Enterprise 10 it stopped working.No idea why.
So I tried to replace select formula like this:
2)
if cstr({?ContractNo})="" or cstr({?ContractNo})="*" or IsNull({?ContractNo}) then True
first I used it without cstr function but after running there was always 'A string is required here' error message. Adding cstr didn't helped. Still the same.
Original select was based on 'like' keyword to make it possible to enter starting character or just a part of string.
As because users in most cases want to select data for all Contracts, select 2) was acceptable or at least I wanted to see anything. No way,
still the same error 'A string is required here' during the runtime.   
Any idea what's going on ?
I'd appreciate any suggestions and comments.
Regards,
greg_zen 

Answer 1

Post Author: SKodidine
CA Forum: Formula
For your first formula, why not try with wildcards and see if it works, since you mentioned that the intent was for the user to enter a part of a string?
Try one of these:
{sp.ContractNo} like {?ContractNo} & '*'     // for any number of characters
{sp.ContractNo} like {?ContractNo} & '?'    // for a single character
For the second (re-write) formula, make sure that the NULL condition is always checked first.
if IsNull({?ContractNo}) or cstr({?ContractNo})="" or cstr({?ContractNo})="*" then True