We’re scratching our heads a bit, after running XI R1 on Linux with reports (both universe-based and not) querying our Warehouse with no problem for almost a year. Now, we need to have run reports in InfoView that query another Oracle database – these are developed in Crystal, and of course use a local Windows ODBC connection at the time of development.
When we save those reports to Enterprise, and try to refresh, we get an error like: “Error in File /usr/local/bobje/bobje/data/procSched/firebird.reportjobserver/~tmp6054349b747bdba.rpt: Unable to connect: incorrect log on parameters.”
We’ve verified that the XI server (firebird) can indeed connect to this new server – a universe connection works fine, and we can run a universe-based report.
In looking at the admin guide, I see directions to configure the odbc.ini file to run reports originally developed in Crystal. I could swear we never had to do this with all our Warehouse-based Crystal reports. I’m asking our sysadmin to dig around for the odbc.ini file, which I can’t get to myself.
So, what am I missing here? Could the odbc.ini have been configured at install without our realizing it? Has anyone seen issues like this, or this error before?
The folks whose server we’re trying to connect to throught there might be firewall issues specific to ODBC – has anyone encountered anything like that? We can connect to it both by pinging and over SQL*Net (a universe connection works). Thoughts?
No, we don’t have it on Windows anymore. The really bizarre thing is that ODBC has been working, with absolutely no additional configuration, for accessing the Warehouse – this is a new, remote server we’re hitting now (in addition).
Well, after a much trial and error, and a long time on the phone with BusObj Tech Support, we have an answer. (Drumroll please)
As it turns out, ridiculous or not, ODBC connections to Oracle are not supported in an XI Enterprise unix/linux enivronment. This is actually stated in the supported platforms doc, which of course we didn’t look at, because it seemed so obvious.
Once we got over our initial shock and dismay, we arrived at the following:
Instead of ODBC, report developers should use Oracle Server connections – these work fine in InfoView on unix/linux. (As it turns out, when I thought our developers had been using ODBC in the past, they’d been using Oracle Server all along).
One can change an existing report’s connection without having to rebuild the entire query or reformat the report (thank goodness!). Right click on the report in the Crystal repository explorer, and pick “set datasource location” (or something like that - I’m not looking at it right now), and update the report accordingly.
Needless to say, we strongly encouraged tech support to update all the admin docs accordingly, and write a knowledgebase note, since they started the case by following their own documentation, until someone else walked up and said it wouldn’t work!
I am facing a similar issue where I have to develop a report using Crystal reports Explorer in XI R2 (Sp1 and MHF1) installed on UNIX, against a SQL Server database. I have the ODBC DSN defined in the odbc.ini file but I do not see this DSN while creating a Report Data Source.
I have test the DSN by creating a small Universe and then a webi report on it and it works fine, however I cannot see the DSN in the Report Data Source wizard.
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