Product Description

Produce winning presentations and reports with expert advice from this definitive guide. Discover vital tips on how to best utilize Crystal Reports’ features to analyze data, and build professional, complex, and effective reports. Find the entire spectrum of user knowledge—from advice for new users on how to develop, design, and build a simple report, to in-depth information on complex features such as Crystal Server Pages and integrating Crystal Reports into Visual Basic.NET programs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #358335 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 960 pages

From the Back Cover

The Ultimate Guide to Crystal Reports 10

Covers new features--Format Painter, Business Views, upgrades to the repository, Java and .NET support, and more

Create visually appealing reports and publish them on the Web with Crystal Reports 10 and help from this comprehensive resource. Whether you’re a beginner or a power user looking for answers to quick questions, many examples and tips, along with clear discussions of the new and improved features, make this a must-have workplace companion. You’ll learn to produce compelling, professional-looking reports that communicate content effectively using helpful features such as charts, complex formulas using custom functions, sorting and grouping, the updated repository, new Business Views, and more. Then, discover how to integrate your reports with Visual Basic, Visual Studio .NET, and Java. Plus, schedule and view your reports on the Web with Crystal Enterprise 10.

• Design and develop page-published quality reports
• Customize your report data using formulas--from simple math computations to full Basic-like formulas
• Store report objects in the updated repository for organization-wide sharing
• Simplify complex database structures with new version 10 Business Views
• Fulfill sophisticated reporting requirements with subreports
• Schedule and view reports on the Web with Crystal Enterprise 10
• Create interactive reports using parameter fields, drill-down, hyperlinks, and managed navigation
• Export reports to common file formats like Microsoft Word or Excel, Acrobat PDF, HTML, XML, and others
• Develop custom Web and Windows applications to integrate reports using Visual Basic, Visual Studio .NET, or Java
• Create reports based on unique data sources, such as OLAP databases, Microsoft Outlook folders, Web server logs, and XML data

George Peck is an internationally recognized consultant, educator, developer, speaker, and best-selling author of Crystal Reports Professional Results and four previous editions of Crystal Reports: The Complete Reference. He is president of The Ablaze Group, a consultation and education firm specializing in Crystal Reports and Crystal Enterprise.

About the Author
GEORGE PECK (Evergreen, CO) is a seasoned consultant and trainer, specializing in Crystal Reports, Crystal Enterprise, and their integration into custom Windows and Web products. He has authored four best-selling editions of Crystal Reports: The Complete Reference.

Customer Reviews

Good review -- lacks advanced depth
The text is one of the first available for Crystal Reports 10. It does a good job of covering all the basics. It even goes into some "intermediate" details in various sections. If you're new or fairly new to Crystal Reports, then the book will be a valuable reference to you.

If you're an experienced Crystal Reports developer, then this book will probably not get too much use. It lacks the hard-hitting details that would make it an excellent standard resource, and it's shy on the "topics for gurus" sections commonly found in complete references. One thing that is good about the book is the scope--there is not much left out entirely, so even an advanced developer will find bits of useful information, particularly when using Crystal Reports in new ways or on new platforms, etc.

If you're familiar with the earlier renditions of this book (i.e., for Crystal Reports version 8.5, etc.), then you will find this rendition exactly as expected.

Complete but not for learners
This book delivers exactly what the title promises. It goes through Crystal Reports 10 screen by screen and feature by feature. It is well laid out and has lots of screen prints. There is way too much verbiage, at least for this reader.

So what's the problem? The book desparately needs examples of how you actually DO some of the things it talks about in such detail. Crystal gives you some really nice sample reports, but they are all finished, not exactly easy to break apart and understand. If this book had some case studies (eg, now lets build the chart report of Quarterly Sales by Employee), I would have found it a whole lot more useful.

Come to think of ut, I would trade this book in a minute for something more task-oriented and hands-on.

Book Review
I have to say I'm disappointed in this book. Normally I don't buy McGraw-Hill "Complete Reference" books because generally I find them lacking sufficient detail and depth to do any real programming. I bought this book because there aren't an abundance of Crystal 10 books out yet and because Crystal Reports documentation is notoriously bad, but this book has lived up to my McGraw-Hill "Complete Reference" expectations. I find the book lacks sufficient detail and code samples to be of any real use for integrating Crystal Reports into an application. Specifically, I'm working with Part II, Crystal Reports 10 on the Web.