Professional Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .Net

by David McAmis

Virtually all applications need to present data to users, but any work beyond basic formatting - charts or conditional formatting, for example - can be very complex to program manually. Crystal Reports is one of the world's leading software packages for creating interactive reports, and it provides developers with an array of tools for creating rich reports that can be published on the Web or integrated within applications. Versions of Crystal Reports...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1861007744
• ISBN13: 9781861007742
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Wrox Press
• Length: 550 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.0" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

The Complete Reference

I am an old VB developer trying to make the transition to .NET. I bought the other crystal book (which is a back breaker) and found only a few pages of .Net. I picked this book up after having a read in the store and it fits the bill. I reccomend it.

The User's Manual for Crystal Reports

No muss, no fuss, just a short, straightforward exposition of Crystal Reports.Net and how to use it in Visual Studio.Net. This is a thin book (about 300 pages), but it covers both Windows Form reports and Web Form reports. The book won't change your life, but it will get you going on CR.Net. I recommend it strongly.

Finally... it happened

I have been developing applications using VB for the past 4 years and Crystal Reports has always been a point of frustration for me. I have tried to use the version that shipped with Visual Studio 6 and with poor functionality and no decent documentation (from Crystal or otherwise), I finally just gave in and bought Active Reports. When I started using .NET, I was happy to find Crystal Reports had been updated but still no manual and poor documentation. I was about to throw in the towel when I came across this book-- it provided the missing link and I am now integrating Crystal Reports into my applications and didn't have to buy any other software to do it. If I had a complaint, it would be that the chapter on data sources doesn't go into a lot of detail on ADO.NET, just how to use it with a report. So if you haven't worked with data sets before, you will probably need to read up on it [at their site] or other similiar sites or grab a book just on ADO.NET if you plan to use it extensively. All in all, it is the best book out there for every .NET developer who finds Crystal Reports as frustrating as I do sometimes!

the missing manual!

after struggling with previous versions of Crystal and VB, I didn't expect too much out of .net but was pleasantly surprise. The tool itself still is playing catch up to the regular version of Crystal but is miles ahead of previous versions. Like most of big Bill's products, the manuals were scarce in .net and the documentation on Crystal is sad. I had bought the complete reference and it was thin on developer topics, so I was happy to find this book and it provides excellent coverage on report integration, but why didn't Crystal do this themselves?!? once again WROX has the best.

The choice in Crystal Reports.Net

I used Crystal Reports in my last job, although I just worked from some reports a friend gave me. I'm now in a position where I need to do my own report development with Crystal Reports in .Net so I bought this book for guidance, and I'm glad I did. The early chapters are fast paced, so you can get to grip with the basics with ease. The later chapters build on this and go into depth discussing formulas, logic and data handling, and I now feel very comfortable in my ability to write reports to impress! Thanks Wrox.