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Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics GP has variety of reporting tools: DexterityReportWriter, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, FRx, Advanced FinancialReports (which is in fact old legacy dex tool), Crystal Reports, SQL Queries(exported to MS Excel), Smart List and Smart List Builder, Microsoft Great PlainsDexterity. This variety of reporting gadgets sometimes leads to misunderstanding onwhat reporting tool can do for you. LetÂ's take this philosophical approach  if youhave a tool to create screws, required in car assembly  this doesnÂ't mean thatnewer version of the screw maker will let your car ran faster or let you to producenew car model. Reporting Tools limitations. Typically such reporting tools as Crystal Reports orMS SQL Server Reporting Services (SRS) allow you to link GP tables in some visuallinking tool and then build your report body, and then group it and show summarizedvalues by groups. Regardless of your expectations that newer reporting tool willdo miracle, you need to go into report engine, which typically is designed outsideof reporting tool, we will describe it below SQL Views. In SQL Server you can go far beyond the restricted functionality ofreporting tool  you can create views, where you can unionize select statements andcross database and even servers platforms  heterogeneous queries, where you pulldata, joining cross-platform data: SQL Server, Oracle, other ODBC compliant, etc. Well, SQL views are great tools, but sometimes you need to go further to SQLscripting, as described below SQL Stored Procedure. You can base your SRS or Crystal Reports on SQL StoredProcedure (sometimes referred as stored proc). Procedure is more flexible andallows you to add variables, parameters, build temporary tables to join your dataacross various sources in single union. Typically you switch to stored procedureapproach when you need temp tables, parameters and exec statements (when you buildyour select statement on the fly from text constructions) GP Report Wizard. We recommend you these considerations. First, try to linktables in reporting tool. If you see that this approach doesnÂ't work, try SQL viewconcept. If View is not an option, consider SQL Stored Procedure  this is finaland guaranteed solution (if you feel that you are still not oriented enough  thinkabout temporary tables  they should allow you to produce final result set)
