Crystal Reports 8.5 and Oracle Utilities

[tmozer]

Are there any free utilies out there that would capture and save information about a Crystal Report so that you could easily see what tables were being used, formulas, parameters, etc.

Also, is there a simple utility to look at Oracle tables to determine the last time the table was updated. I have a ton of tables and would like to know which ones are probably not in use......

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
There is an export format option ( if you installed it) called Report Definition that will provide much info about the contents of a report ( there are 3rd party tools that do this as well, with more configurable options)..

Oracle does not maintain any info about when or how often a table is accessed - You can write triggers or enable auditing to show this but it does have a performance hit is too much is audited..




PS: try revoking the access rights to some of the tables you suspect are not being used and wait for the angry phone calls...

 

[Madawc]

If you've inherited a bunch of Crystal reports, you can find out what each one uses by clicking Set Location under database. This shows you a short list of the tables; you can get a better look using Visual Linking Expert.

You can also get an idea of the coding by using Export (the envelope with the red arrow) and choosing Report Definition. This gives you a long text file that can be quite useful.

I don't know of any free utilities - I'd be interested myself if they exist. There are said to be some good third-party tools, but the owners expect to be paid for them.

Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK)

 

[synapsevampire]

Aside from the Report Definition Export, there are numerous utilities that document reports, though I've yet to find one that does a good job with describing data sources.

Most allow for a trial period:

http://www.kenhamady.com/bookmarks.html

Oracle tables won't tell you when they've been updated unless you have some type of auditing or timestamps. Check with your dba.

I would suggest posting in an Oracle forum for Oracle related questions. There are a few sharp Oracle people here (such as Turk), but there are more there.

-k

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Thanks for the kudos synapse, I check the Oracle forums as well, so I will be glad to help where I can..