webservices as datasource for crystal reports

I am a crystal developer but new to webservices. i am using crystal reports 2008

I have following questions wrt web services as data source

1)we are currently using cxf web service with security policy SAML token how can it be enabled in crystal reports

2) can web service data source be mixed with relational data source in crystal reports as we are using more than one data base 3) how does web service datasource get cached,cleared and cleaned in crystal reports

questions on parameter

1) can we have parameter page backed up by a data source so that crystal takes parameters directly from 开发者_如何学Cthat 2) a scripting or programming layer that can be used in crystal to pass parameters.

how can we connect to live stream data of web services to crystal reports how to webservice a datasource

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you

Instead of having crystal reports handle the connecting to the web service, and and also the merging that data with other relational datasources, do that accessing and merging of data in a business logic layer in code to produce a hierarchy of objects. If you are reporting on this data, then it is likely that such a business logic layer already exists for some application consuming it. The object hierarchy that is produced by the business logic layer can usually be serialized to XML very easily.

This XML can be used to design the report offline.