Is it possible to query the Crystal CMS database and get meaningful data back? The data appears to be encrypted.
I am running Business Objects Crystal Report Server version 11.5
Actually what I discovered I needed to do was use the administration tools available from the Administration Launchpad. I was not responsible for installing Crystal and did not even realise this existed. The query builder and also the "Report Datasources" feature that were available from here was exactly what I needed.
Use the Query Builder tool to query the CMS: http://[server]/businessobjects/enterprise115/WebTools/websamples/query/. For more information about the query language, see http://devlibrary.businessobjects.com/businessobjectsxi/en/en/BOE_SDK/boesdk_dotNet_doc/doc/boesdk_net_doc/html/QueryLanguageReference.html#2146566.
The properties that are returned by this query are store in a serialized state (I'm guessing binary and encrypted) in the Properties field in the infoobject database table (I can't remember the actual name of the table).
I had a similar problem on my workstation at the office. It sounds like you need to reinstall (that's what worked for me). This is a known bug according BussinessObjects (I had to call them and use our maintenance support). Hopefully you can find more information by searching for, 'Crystal Business query corruption' instead of calling them if the reinstall doesn't work for you.
They told me the data is not encrypted, but occasionally components don't install correctly and the queries come back in a binary form that is all garbled.
Good luck!
There are also several third party solutions out there that naturally layer "on top of" the CMS or Central Management Server to abstract the proprietary storage format into human-readable form. We develop a native database driver to the CMS which can be found at http://www.infolytik.com/products.
full disclosure: I'm the main developer and founder of Infolytik.
My experience is that the data is not encrypted but that it is not really readable. Your best option is to use the Auditor Universes to build you some reports. You can also check out the SQL that the auditor Universes are uses as a baseline for constructing additional reporting.
Related
I would like to create and archive a collection of demo ASP.NET web form applications that show projects with certain features in the sense "this feature can be implemented like this" -- to be presented to a potential customer.
Before the presentation, I would like to get the selected set of demo and install them easily to the notebook. Each of the demos will be "frozen". The target notebook is not the customer's one. It is one of our ones that is bring to the customer for the presentation. This way, it can be prepared in the sense that a named MS SQL instance with the fixed name can be ready, etc.
Can you share some experience with such situation? (I do not want to have marked this question as of opinionated; so please, if you have some explicit links to the related documents or explicit suggestions...)
Here are some other facts and initial ideas:
Each of the demo projects uses two databases: xxx_users (the standard ASP.NET authentication...), and xxx_application (and possibly xxx_external) where xxx is a prefix for the specific project.
The demo application is expected to be compiled (binary only, no sources needed for the presentation).
The Web.config files can use the local\SQLINSTANCEFORDEMOS in connection strings.
The SQL instance has a fixed name, fixed administrator account (like sa) and fixed password for the logging to the SQL instance. This way, it can be included in the Web.config files.
The sample data can be fairly big (not extremely tiny).
The application will use its own SQL tables in the xxx_application database.
The application will simulate the outer database that is accessed from the web application can be simulated by xxx_external database.
This way, I should be able to create and archive SQL backups of xxx_users, xxx_application, and xxx_external databases, plus the archive of the web app binary.
Have you ever encountered this situation? Is the approach reasonable? Could you share some better ideas?
I'm a bit of a Drupal newbie but have committed myself to porting some quite complex bespoke websites.
One of these is a surf report site which uses a database with millions of time/location rows to get the local conditions. Obviously can't write this to a Drupal table everyday so am looking for a way to connect and retrieve live data.
I'll need to use the external data in a number of displays which would normally be nodes, views, blocks etc.
The ideal solution would be if the external data just appeared as local data, but I'm guessing that is a rather big ask.
I'm open to any approach. If it involves writing a module some pointers on what to look at (preferably code examples) would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Chris
Maybe you can use the Data module.
From the documentation:
The Data module lets you use database tables that are foreign to Drupal.
You can 'adopt' a table in your database that ordinarily Drupal would not be aware of. This might be external data you have imported, or a table that another application has created.
It also provides Views integration.
I had to show info from a legacy staff databse in my Drupal 6. I have explored three ways:
Importing database rows as nodes in a nightly cronjob
Accessing the external database in my own module
Accessing the external database using hook_views_data()
If I started again I would use hook_views_data(), it's more flexible, specially if you want to match the external database information with drupal nodes.
Best.
Have a look at the Forena module which can be used to display (= query, not update) data stored in databases external to Drupal. It comes with a full suite of Supported database connections, such as MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle, Postgres or any PDO compliant variation.
For more details about Forena, 2 types of documentation are available:
Community documentation.
Documentation that comes with Forena, which you can access right after install and enable of the module. Checkout the demo site for an online example of the Forena Documentation.
The Sample reports and graphs are fully functional, such as the drill downs available on the Master Summary with drill down. Using Forena "skins", you can also use the amazing "dataTables" (and its widgets, such as sorting by selected columns).
Forena also includes a UI for either creating your reports (the WYSIWYG Report Editor) and/or for creating your SQL queries (the WYSIWYG Query Builder).
Disclosure: I'm a co-maintainer of Forena.
Someone at my office asked me to build a browser tool to let them specify a database table's columns and then let them edit the rows. I would be happy to do that, but it seems like this must have been written before or is part of some CMS tool out there. Is there a tool/service/website that lets user create simple database schemas that can then be editted? I am looking for a very simple tool. That really amounts to a simple table editor. It doesn't need to know about foreign keys or indexes. Something like multiple people editing a spreadsheet on Google docs but only let users edit one row at a time.
Extra points for an ASP.NET/MVC tool.
I'm not sure if it is what you looking for but have a look at phpMyAdmin.
It is a tool for mySql to manage databases, table, user, and data of a mySql installation.
It is a php written webfrontend.
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php
This may be overkill for your needs, but we use DbVisualizer to manipulate our databases.
I have made a tutorial that shows you how to install phpMyAdmin on your server. The designer mode makes it simple to manage your database and it runs in your browser. This tutorial shows you how http://havenofcode.com/tutorial.php?tut=9.
Does anybody know of an easy way to serialise Umbraco settings (Document Types, Media Types etc) to the file system in order to manage that data within source control?
Note: changes to settings made on the file system need to be easily integrated back into the CMS database.
Also, does anybody know of a way to package up settings from a development environment for rolling out to staging and live environments?
Looking back through my unanswered questions, providing updates where possible.
For reference, you can use uSync to serialise content from Umbraco:
https://our.umbraco.org/projects/developer-tools/usync
There is no method currently other than rolling your own package to do it but it should be relatively straight forward using the API. Check out the "Backing up Document Types" article as a starting point .
Your second point about deployment was something discussed in an open session at the Umbraco Codegarden this year and no conclusion was made that was a one answer fits all.
I would like to find out if there is wiki software that runs on SQLite.
Sure is.
Instiki
Instiki (What Is Instiki) is a basic
Wiki clone so pretty and easy to set
up, you’ll wonder if it’s really a
wiki. Runs on Rails and focuses on
portability and stability. Supports
file uploads, PDF export, RSS,
multiple users and password
protection. Some use Instiki as a CMS
- Content Management System because of its ability to export static pages.
Fossil, which is a DVCS with many other features (including a wiki) is built on top of Sqlite (in face, made by D. Richard Hipp who wrote Sqlite ). It can be found at: http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki
According to the SQLite Users Page, the CVSTrac program is using SQLite as its internal database structure (you have to follow the link to the CVSTrac site to see the details). I'm sure there are others by hunting around the site.
Wiki::Toolkit can use SQLite as its database.
Mediawiki does, but it is only in the development stage.
Any of the Django ones should be able to, because Django is flexible about which Database backend it uses and SQLite is one of the options.