The Need for Speed in Crystal 

If you’ve been adventurous enough to create your own Crystal Reports,  you may have noticed that sometimes your report doesn’t run as quickly as you’d like.  To optimize the performance of your report, follow these instructions: Open the report designer.  From the menu bar select “File” then select “Report Options”.  Once in report options you’ll see a lot of check boxes.  Make sure there’s a check mark in the box next to “Convert Null Field to Default” and uncheck the box “Use Indexes Or Server For Speed”.  This is report specific so you’ll need to change this for all reports.

      If your report still runs slow there are several other reasons it may not be performing to your liking.  You should make sure that you link tables in the report by their key fields.  If you’ve added subreports to your main report, you’ll notice an inherent lag in speed.  Also, the sheer size of your database can have a large  effect on speed as does the speed of the machine running the report.  To that end, we’re looking forward to the release of Sage MAS 90, 200 4.0 this fall.  This new version will be built on a new database structure that should be a better (quicker) data source for Crystal Reports to pull from.  Keep an eye out in The Mariner this fall where we’ll comment on Crystal performance and the 4.0 version of Sage MAS 90, 200.