Confusing Error Messages

There are many types of error messages in BusinessObjects Enterprise and other Business Objects products that are misleading. Misleading in a way that when you read the error message you start searching at the wrong place for an solution.

One example of such an error message in Crystal Reports is: "The report could not be opened from BusinessObjects Enterprise.", "Possibly the report is on a different BusinessObjects Enterprise system than the one you are currently logged onto. If the problem persists, please contact your administrator.".



It also depends which version of Crystal Reports you are using. The error message above is for version 11, 11.5 and 12. If you are using version 10 you get another error message. That message is much better at describing the cause of the error.

The cause for this error message was that the user lacked a security permission for Crystal Reports report objects. Not that obvious when you study the error message, or what do you think?!?

Data Source Configuration In Crystal Reports

Here is a tip on how to troubleshoot an error in a Crystal Reports report when using files like Excel and Access.

The error that you get when trying to view the report in InfoView is Error: The database logon information for this report is either incomplete or incorrect.



This is due to the configuration made in Crystal Reports when creating the report against an Excel file. When you create the report you often point your data source against a file through a mapped drive. This setup doesn't work when publishing the report to the repository on the BusinessObjects Enterprise server. You must specifiy the data source name as an UNC path (like //server/) or as an name of an DSN that exist on the server.

If you have entered a path for a mapped drive and you try to reconfigure that setting in Central Management Console (CMC) it will not work. I don't know why this doesn't work for this data source setting.

Example, if you make a report with a local DSN with name DSN_A against a database server named DB_A and publish it to the repository server there are two scenarios;

• Scenario 1: The DSN exist on the BOE server with the same name and everything works!
• Scenario 2: A DSN with name DSN_A doesn't exist on the BOE server but another DSN against DB_A exist with the name DSN_B. In this case you can open up Database Configuration on the report and remap data source DSN_A to the local DSN (DSN_B) on the BOE server. And now everything works!

But for the case with a data source file path it doesn't work.

Perhaps elementary for some but not for me. Why doesn't this work? It could work if you wanted to...