Publish Reports with Bing Search Results in Crystal Reports

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

Connect to Bing Search Results

If you have not already, first 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.

To connect to Bing, set the ApiKey connection property. To obtain the API key, sign into Microsoft Cognitive Services and register for the Bing Search APIs.

Two API keys are then generated; select either one.

When querying tables, the SearchTerms parameter must be supplied in the WHERE clause.

When you configure 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.

You can then follow the procedure below to use the Report Wizard to create the Bing Search connection.

1. In a new report, click Create New Connection -> ODBC.

2. In the resulting wizard, click Select Data Source and select the DSN in the Data Source Name menu.

Design a Report

After adding a ODBC connection to Bing Search, you can then use the Report Wizard to add Bing Search results to your report.

1. Click File -> New -> Standard Report.
2. Expand the ODBC node under Create New Connection and double-click Make a New Connection.

3. Configure the data source by selecting the tables and fields needed in the report. This example uses the Title and ViewCount columns from the VideoSearch table.

You can then configure grouping, sorting, and summaries. For example, this article groups on Title and summarizes on ViewCount. See the following section to use the aggregate and summary to create a chart.

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 that aggregates the values in the Title column.

1. In the Standard Report Creation Wizard, select the Bar Chart option and select the column you grouped by, Title in this example, 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.

Preview the finished report to view the chart, populated with your data. If you want to filter out null values, use a SelectionFormula.

Working with Remote Data

To ensure that you see updates to volatile 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.