Side-by-side installation

Crystal Reports components now support side-by-side installation. This type of installation allows multiple versions of previously shared DLLs to be installed on the same machine. The DLLs are isolated on the machine allowing applications that require different versions of the same shared DLL to be installed on the same machine. This feature is available in version 9 or higher. For example, you can have an application using version 9 (or higher) of the RDC running on the same machine as an application using a previous version of the RDC.

Crystal Reports components check the registry for the path to the required Crystal Reports runtime files. The installation of this registry key is handled by the Crystal Reports Merge Modules. The merge modules will deploy the runtime files to the default path \Program Files\Common Files\Business Objects\3.0\bin. It is recommended that you use the Crystal Reports Merge Modules in your installation. If you would rather distribute some or all of the runtime without the use of the merge modules, you must set the registry key.

Setting the Registry Key

The path to the registry key is:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Business Objects\suite 11.0\Crystal Reports]

The registry key is CommonFiles. Set the value for CommonFiles to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Business Objects\3.0\bin\".