I need to build and customize a CV report by combining data from eight different tables. I don’t want to use a database view, because when I tried that approach, it crashed. Please suggest a reliable method to create the report directly from the tables.
I don't think you can easily combine data without using a database view. If you retrieve data from the tables separately, you need to write a lot of code yourself to combine data. That's why PHPMaker reports require you to combine data by view first, read Preparing Data for Reports.