Following on from my Online Order Tracking System I decided to have a go at producing a pdf downloadable/printable catalogue using the Actinic Database.
2 days later and after a crash course in using Crystal Reports and data manipulation, I can produce a pdf catalogue of my entire Actinic website in minutes (940 products).
Sample PDF Catalogue (198k) - Contains Lingerie Images - Please do not visit if you may be offended
Full PDF Catalogue (5.4MB) - Contains Lingerie Images - Please do not visit if you may be offended
To produce I used Crystal Reports 8.5, CviewImage and Acrobat Writer.
Crystal does not support images from filenames in database tables so that is where CviewImage comes in.
I copied the Products and Section tables to a new database so that I could strip out Dummy Products, HTML code and to change the imagefile locations to the full directory path.
I then created the Crystal Report that pulls and formats all the information.
A lot of work to initially setup but opens up many new ways of marketing our products (Give away Cd's - Party Planning etc..) at a fraction of the cost of a professionally produced catalogue.
I may offer this as a commercial service if anyones interested !
Dom Watts
sales@sexy2wear.co.uk
Sexy 2 Wear Lingerie
2 days later and after a crash course in using Crystal Reports and data manipulation, I can produce a pdf catalogue of my entire Actinic website in minutes (940 products).
Sample PDF Catalogue (198k) - Contains Lingerie Images - Please do not visit if you may be offended
Full PDF Catalogue (5.4MB) - Contains Lingerie Images - Please do not visit if you may be offended
To produce I used Crystal Reports 8.5, CviewImage and Acrobat Writer.
Crystal does not support images from filenames in database tables so that is where CviewImage comes in.
I copied the Products and Section tables to a new database so that I could strip out Dummy Products, HTML code and to change the imagefile locations to the full directory path.
I then created the Crystal Report that pulls and formats all the information.
A lot of work to initially setup but opens up many new ways of marketing our products (Give away Cd's - Party Planning etc..) at a fraction of the cost of a professionally produced catalogue.
I may offer this as a commercial service if anyones interested !
Dom Watts
sales@sexy2wear.co.uk
Sexy 2 Wear Lingerie
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