Create Reports with BigCommerce Data in SAP Crystal Reports

Crystal Reports has many options for offloading data processing to remote data; this enables real-time reporting. The CData ODBC Driver for BigCommerce brings this capability to Crystal Reports. This article shows how to create a report on BigCommerce data that refreshes when you run the report.

Refer to the given table for the tools and versions used for this article:

Connect to BigCommerce Data

If you have not already, specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

BigCommerce authentication is based on the standard OAuth flow. To authenticate, you must initially create an app via the Big Commerce developer platform where you can obtain an OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL. These three parameters will be set as connection properties to your driver.

Additionally, in order to connect to your BigCommerce Store, you will need your StoreId. To find your Store Id please follow these steps:

1. Log in to your BigCommerce account.
2. From the Home Page, select Advanced Settings > API Accounts.
3. Click Create API Account.
4. A text box named API Path will appear on your screen.
5. Inside you can see a URL of the following structure: https://api.bigcommerce.com/stores/{Store Id}/v3.
6. As demonstrated above, your Store Id will be between the 'stores/' and '/v3' path paramters.
7. Once you have retrieved your Store Id you can either click Cancel or proceed in creating an API Account in case you do not have one already.

When configuring the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Design a Report in SAP Crystal Reports

Follow the procedure below to use the SAP Crystal Reports tool to create the BigCommerce connection and Design a Report.

1. File -> New -> Standard Report.
2. Expand the ODBC (RDO) node under Create New Connection and double-click on "Make a New Connection". Select CData BigCommerce Sys or any other source to prepare the report. Click on NEXT and FINISH.
3. Configure the data source by selecting the tables needed in the report and clicking NEXT.
4. You can also link tables from the BigCommerce data in SAP Crystal Reports. Click on NEXT after adding the links between tables.
5. After the tables are selected, select the fields you want displayed in the report from the selected table, followed by NEXT.
6. Select the "Group By" field to group the information on the report.
7. Sort the groups based on summarised totals and click on NEXT.

Create a Chart

After selecting a column to group by, the Standard Report Creation Wizard presents the option to create a chart. Follow the steps below to create a chart aggregating the FirstName column's values.

1. In the Standard Report Creation Wizard, select the Bar Chart option and select the column you grouped by in the "On change of" menu.
2. In the Show Summary menu, select the summary you created.
3. Select filters and a template, as needed, to finish the wizard.

Select a template for the report to preview the finished report and view the chart populated with your data.

The Final Report

You can now see that the report contains all the fields specified.

Working with Remote Data

To ensure that you see updates to data, click File and clear the "Save Data with Report" option. As you interact with the report, for example, drilling down to hidden details, Crystal Reports executes SQL queries to retrieve the data needed to display the report. To reload data you have already retrieved, refresh or rerun the report.

You can offload processing onto the driver by hiding details elements and enabling server-side grouping. To do this, you need to select a column to group by in the report creation wizard.

1. Click File -> Report Options and select the "Perform Grouping On Server" option.
2. Click Report -> Section Expert and select the Details section of your report. Select the "Hide (Drill-Down OK)" option.

When you preview your report with the hidden details, Crystal Reports executes a GROUP BY query. When you double-click a column in the chart to drill down to details, Crystal Reports executes a SELECT WHERE query that decreases load times by retrieving only the data needed.

At this point, you have created a SAP Crystal report built on top of live BigCommerce data using SAP Crystal Reports and CData ODBC Driver. Learn more about the CData ODBC Driver for BigCommerce and download a free trial from the CData ODBC Driver for BigCommerce page. Let our Support Team know if you have any questions.