I have got some of the Crystal Reports things solved. I got a programmer I used from eastern europe to show me how to do it. It looks like it took him all of five minutes to implement a simple report for me. There was a trick though. It has to do with the XML Schema.

In order to write a report you need to use (I believe) a schema that describes the data being sent through. Now, this data format varies depending on the data that I have, and could vary with the programming process. So the trick is to generate the schema whenever things change. Doing this is really really simple. The following command in VB.NET will do it :-
ds.WriteXmlSchema(“c:dsxmlsch.xml”)

What could be simpler? I think I then just use this as the source in Crystal Reports and things then just work. I still have a lot of things to work with on this, but it is looking hopeful.

This is cute. Walmart in the USA are selling a Remote Control Plane with a built in digital camera. The wingspan is over 1m wide, and it can take up to 24 photos in the air. Cute toy. If only I could fly… And if only the plane had a radio link to push the pictures back to the ground whilst flying… That would be even more fun.