While never having considered myself a genius, I also never felt I was
stupid, at least until I started working with Crystal Reports.  I really do
RTFM, and I cannot figure out simple things such as the following (please
help!):

I have a simple database with 3 tables:
  PATIENT
  DIAGNOSES
  TREATMENT

I want to print a report that lists the patient info in the header, then I
want a single section that lists ALL of the diagnoses together, then another
section that lists ALL of the treatments together (the diagnoses and
treatment tables are related to the patients table via a field "PatientID",
which is the primary key of the PATIENT table and a foreign key in the other
two tables).

Crystal will not allow me to do this.  Perhaps I do not understand their
terminology.  I created two sections, and put the fields from the DIAGNOSES
table in one section, the fields from TREATMENT table in the other one.

This is such a simple concept, but crystal won't do it for me.  If I have 3
records in DIAGNOSES and 2 records in TREATMENT, crystal prints out SIX
sections.  It first matches the 1st record in DIAGNOSES with every record in
TREATMENT and prints a section for that.  It then matches the second record
in DIAGNOSES with every record in TREATMENT and prints that, and so on.

So instead of something like:
    Diagnoses:
       Tuberculosis
       Asthma
       Diptheria
  Treatment:
    Aspirin
    Cough Syrup

I get:
   Diagnoses:
     Tuberculosis
  Treatment:
     Asprin
  Diagnoses:
    Tuberculosis
  Treatment:
    CoughSyrup
  Diagnoses:
    Asthma
  Treatment:
    Asprin
  Diagnoses:
    Asthma
  Treament:
   Cough Syrup

... and so on.  I did RTFM and no help.  This is such an incredibly simple
concept and I can not make Crystal understand it.  I have tried every
possible permutation of its concepts of GROUPS, SECTIONS, etc.  What the
h--- am I missing?

This is the most incredibly frustrating reporting tool I have ever seen in
my life.  Is this really all there is out there, or is there something
better that works with Visual Basic?

Thanks,

Mark Alsip

(please make obvious change to email to respond directly)

Hi Mark,
Hi Mark,
Put a Diagnosis and Treatment header (in the Group section).   Then
directly underneath (in the Detail section), put the Diagnosis and
Treatment fields.    This should do what you want!  
Otherwise,  you have to use subreports, read up on it if you can.  ie.
Diagnosis in the first Group and Detail and then in the footer
section, put a subreport that would be your Treatment info.
I bought Crystal Reports for Dummies because it was the only book
available in Duthies (Large book store!!)     and I tell you...if you
are not a Dummy,  there is no way you can figure it out!!
Bye,
Joanne

It would really be appreciated if you would copy posts
to me at jdavid at uniserve dot com

The limitation of a report is one and only one join in the main report. This
will give you Paitent and Diagnosis. Unfortunately Treatment is a second
join so it cannot be in the main report but must be in a sub report.
The sub report will have its own section and will list as many treatments as
there are.

Read up on sub reports. The first one will be a bit of a bear but once you
get the hang of it it will be second nature

If each treatment was related to a diagnosis then this could be done in the
main report.

i.e.
   Paitent1
      Diagonsis A
            Treatment bla
            Treatment Bla
     Diagnosis B
            Treatment x
   Paitent 2

One other thing be careful about joins If a paitent has no diagnosis and you
are using PC databases with the paitent as the driving table then you will
list all paitents
If you are using a SQL database (SQL Server, Oracle, etc) you will only list
paitents with Diagnosis.

Thanks Tom for the info.

This is so hard to accept... Crystal is THE leading reporting tool?  Even my
old Paradox V5 could handle multiple joins in a report with ease.

This is so sad, so sad.

Thanks again for the info though, at least I know I wasn't losing my mind
with what the reporting tool was doing to me.

-- Mark

[snip]

Crystal will handle an unlimited number of joins it is just that each of
them other than the first needs to be in a sub report.

You can have numerous tables in one join in Crystal. I have had 7 or 8 with
no problem. The problem is when the data that you want to display cannot be
gathered in one SQL statement.

In the example in point you can return one row for every diagnosis of every
paitent in a single result set.  What you cannot do or at least not easily
is to return one row for each diagnosis OR each treatment of every paitent.
This is how SQL works and isn't Crystal's problem.

The learning curve on subreports is steep but very short. Once you get over
it you will laugh at those who can't do it because they haven't invested a
few hours learning how to do it.

I was only attempting to point out that previous, older, and more
"primitive" reporting tools such as the ones that came with Paradox could
handle this situation with no trouble.  Of course SQL should work the same
way, but how the reporting tool was written to handle it is my complaint.
If the crystal reports engineers want to make this intuitive, they might go
back and study Paradox...  you drag your master table onto the report, you
drag your detail tables onto the report, and you're done...  no need for the
subreporting, which I've read some very negative opinions about...

I would never laugh at anyone over something like that.

I agree, Crystal Reports has always had a very steep learning curve - I first used it with VB 3 -
after that experiece I managed to avoid it until VB 6

While I admit it is a very powerful tool it takes an enormous amount of effort, trial & error and
questions in these newsgroups to achieve what sometimes seems very simple, basic reports!

Basically, it's not aimed & has never been aimed at beginner/average users

I feel a lot better after that!

A.H

After experiencing the trial and error method, I seem to have a good command
of the product.  Would anyone care to offer a pointer to a similar (ie easy
to use ;->), potentially non-programming product to develop simple data
entry screens.  The backend is MS SQL.

first used it with VB 3 -
effort, trial & error and