Open Dental Forum

Hello, has anyone used Crystal Reports with Open Dental? I have a trial version and want to play around.

Thanks

I've seen a post at the MySQL site saying that Crystal Reports can work with MySQL database version 5.0.27 or later. Open Dental uses version 5.0.22 or some even 4.1. For those, an ODBC connector is needed as a go-between. I used Crystal Reports long ago and liked it, but since the RDL report format meets our needs, connects directly to the database without ODBC, and is around $327 cheaper (that is, free), why bother with it.

what reports are you able to generate with RDL report format

Try iReports (download from sourceforge). I have written a *lot* of reports with iReports and it only gets better. I would be happy to help if needed.

We have over 40 reports, from routing slips to referral reports to production/writeoff reports. The nice thing about RDL Designer in OD is that you can paste in a query and it creates a table or list based on the fields, with various layout and formatting options that aren't available in "user query." Formulas can also be applied to the results. Use "search" for "RDL" on the Open Dental website and you get 2 results, one with a nice sample report and one with rather over-complicated instructions and helpful links. It can connect thru the ODR.dll or directly to the database with a MySQL server connection string. It's not very user-friendly though and you have to know how to query the database and pull more human-readable results from the raw data.

I've started posting some of my info sheets onto Google docs. Maybe there's a way to share the rdl files there. Then you can do some Youtube videos!

this goes back to a previous post of what third party programs are you using. if ireport does what you say this would be an area that OD users need guidance on and support on from OD team, since reporting is a weak link for od

fdscadmin wrote:Try iReports (download from sourceforge). I have written a *lot* of reports with iReports and it only gets better. I would be happy to help if needed.

iReport is pretty good as stand-alone application but it is more for advanced users and is also java. Considering that most reports run by your staff... there is a potential of "staff whining" involved.

I wonder if it could be integrated in OD through plugin API http://opendental.com/manual/plugins.html?

mowgli wrote:We have over 40 reports, from routing slips to referral reports to production/writeoff reports. The nice thing about RDL Designer in OD is that you can paste in a query and it creates a table or list based on the fields, with various layout and formatting options that aren't available in "user query." Formulas can also be applied to the results. Use "search" for "RDL" on the Open Dental website and you get 2 results, one with a nice sample report and one with rather over-complicated instructions and helpful links. It can connect thru the ODR.dll or directly to the database with a MySQL server connection string. It's not very user-friendly though and you have to know how to query the database and pull more human-readable results from the raw data.

Id ove to hear more about how you were able to do this, especially the part about getting to be more user friendly and getting readable results. Can you please expand?