Crystal Reports Visual Studio runtime exceptions on SQL Azure

[DellSC]

For 20+ years, we have been successfully running Crystal Reports via the runtime in our ASP.NET web app on SQL Server (of varying versions) in hypervisor and VM infrastructure.

We are now attempting to migrate to Azure SQL Database Platform As A Service.

We can run the exact same tenant and application successfully connected to our ‘old’ SQL Server but once we point said app to a SQL Azure DB we start getting these INTERMITTENT exceptions that we’ve never seen before:

Example 1:

System.Web.HttpUnhandledException (0x80004005): Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown. ---> CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.InternalException: Error in File ZZZ116156_48048_{36851D49-1F02-4F14-9F02-D7FAE9837054}.rpt:<br>Failed to retrieve data from the database. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: Error in File ZZZ116156_48048_{36851D49-1F02-4F14-9F02-D7FAE9837054}.rpt:<br>Failed to retrieve data from the database.<br> at CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.Controllers.ReportSourceClass.Export(ExportOptions pExportOptions, RequestContext pRequestContext)<br> at CrystalDecisions.ReportSource.EromReportSourceBase.ExportToStream(ExportRequestContext reqContext)<br> --- End of inner exception stack trace ---<br> at CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.ConvertDotNetToErom.ThrowDotNetException(Exception e)<br> at CrystalDecisions.ReportSource.EromReportSourceBase.ExportToStream(ExportRequestContext reqContext)<br> at CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.FormatEngine.ExportToStream(ExportRequestContext reqContext)<br> at CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.ReportDocument.ExportToStream(ExportOptions options)<br> at CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.ReportDocument.ExportToStream(ExportFormatType formatType)

Example 2:

System.Web.HttpUnhandledException (0x80004005): Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x800002F4): Failed to open the connection.<br>ZZZ14064_133364_{0B6CB231-743A-4151-82A9-B9C98B9FFF6A}.rpt<br> at CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.Controllers.DatabaseControllerClass.SetTableLocation(ISCRTable CurTable, ISCRTable NewTable)<br> at CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.Table.set_Location(String value)

We've update the runtime on our web servers and libraries in our code to the latest version (CRRuntime_32bit_13_0_34.msi) to no effect.

Any help or information you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanx…!

[DellSC]

What type of connection are you using to connect to your database? When you upgraded your application, did you upgrade your reports to use the latest version of the SQL Server client that will provide the connection to SQL Server on Azure?

-Dell

[pgoruick]

Database Type: OLE DB (ADO)
Provider: SQLNCLI11

That's certainly a good point and warrants some looking into. We'd just assumed the same driver/provider would work in SQL Azure, so we may have to change to something better-supported for that service.

Unfortunately, we have hundreds of reports...I hope this can be modified via code!

[pgoruick · Accepted solution]

After setting up the logger (thanx, Don), we saw the report was running fine until, for whatever networking reason(s), there was a 25-ish second pause after which the driver apparently fell back to named pipes connection which, of course, is not valid and the report failed.

The solution, which appears to be holding, is to append the port number to the server name to 'force' the driver to only use network connection.