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A Crystal report built on a custom IAL as its data source works fine standalone but fails previewing inside IFS with a NullReferenceException, even though other Crystal reports on the same Crystal Web Service work correctly. Is using an IAL as the data source for this kind of report the actual problem?

Answer

Likely yes, if this is an OPERATIONAL report specifically, as opposed to a Crystal Quick Report — IALs generally don't work reliably as the data source for Operational Reports, and the standard workaround is converting the IAL into a genuine database VIEW instead and building the Operational Report against that view. Separately, a few commonly-repeated claims about Crystal/CR_WEB_INIT limitations are actually incorrect and worth knowing: SQL Expressions CAN still be used together with CR_WEB_INIT, just add CR_WEB_INIT after the SQL expressions; and Crystal Commands CAN also be used, contrary to some guidance suggesting otherwise. For view-aliasing, using a literal backslash/double-backslash prefix on view names only works if a specific registry fix has been applied to the development PC, so using _A (for views) and _I (for IALs) suffixes is a more broadly workable aliasing convention that doesn't require that registry change.

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