I would like to create a Crystal Reports report using pre-existing LINQ classes that live in a different project than where the report lives. I can't find a way to do this. I'm using VS2008.
Whenever I expand the "Project Data" tree, I see only classes in my current project. The "History" tree shows me the last 5 class in the OTHER project, but I need more than those 5. I found the "Make New Connection" option under "ADO.NET", but it looks like it's looking for XML sources and DLLs.
You might be able to hack your way to getting all the tables you need in the report. The History information is read from xml files on disk. These usually reside in "C:\Documents and Settings{UserName}\My Documents\History". Here you will find the five most recently used connections. I haven't tried this, but perhaps you can set up your first five classes, add the necessary tables and save the report and close VStudio. Next, edit the xml files to point to the right classes and then reopen the solution. Go to Databse Expert and you should have the new five history connections available. You can then add the necessary tables to the existing report.
FYI the registry setting "HKCU\Business Objects\Suite 11.5\Crystal Reports\Crystal Data Source History" gives the location of the history files.
I dont know if this is related or not, but I have a similar issue with the Visual Studio ReportBuilder(.rdlc reports). What happens is that when I am building a report my datasource from other projects do not show in the data sources window. What I have to end up doing is hilighting the project in solution explorer that the data sources are in. Only after doing this will I be able to choose datasources from the other project.