Registration of the Automation Server and Distribution of the Visual Basic Project

An Automation Server must be registered on any system on which it will be used. Automation Servers are registered in the Windows 95 or Windows NT System Registry. The file can be physically stored anywhere on your hard drive because the Registry settings tell Windows where the file is located when it is needed.

When you make an ActiveX DLL project in Visual Basic 5.0 or an OLE DLL project in Visual Basic 4.0, using the Make command from the File menu, Visual Basic automatically registers the Automation Server on your system. Once registered, you can easily test and use the new User-Defined Functions from the Crystal Reports Formula Editor.

Visual Basic 4.0 also includes an easy-to-use command-line application, REGSVR32.EXE, that will handle registering an Automation Server on your system. This application is located in the \CLISVR subdirectory of the directory in which you installed Visual Basic. This application can be used from an MS-DOS prompt by simply specifying the name of the Automation Server DLL. For example:

RegSvr32.exe C:\Projects\CRUFLMyFunctions.dll

The easiest way to distribute any Visual Basic project is to use the Setup Wizard to create an installation program. In addition to making sure all necessary files are installed where appropriate, the Setup Wizard can add code to your installation to register the Automation Server in the user's system Registry.

In addition to installing and registering your Automation Server, you must also provide the U2LCOM.DLL UFL file on any system that will use the functions exposed by your Automation Server. If the system has Crystal Reports installed, then this file will already be located in the system's \WINDOWS\CRYSTAL directory.



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