Crystal Reports XI for Developers

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 464 pages
• Published by: Charles River Media
• Edition: 1st Edition November 21, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1584504110
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1584504115
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 7.2 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 2.2 pounds

Book Description
Crystal Reports XI is a powerful software tool for turning raw data into corporate decision-making information. End-users and developers alike use Crystal Reports to extract and format information, and with over 9 million licenses shipped Crystal Reports is one of the most popular packages for corporate reporting. Crystal Reports XI for Developers provides a solid introduction for any report or application developer just getting started with Crystal Reports. Using this practical guide, they will learn to create presentation-quality reports from a variety of data sources, and how to add the advanced features developers need to analyze report data. Developers will learn to create simple and complex reports with the formatting and organization techniques presented in the book, and how to add filtering and summaries to crunch millions of rows of data into a concise and meaningful format. They will also learn to create their own formulas and SQL Expressions, as well as how to use advanced Crystal Reports features such as subreports, cross-tabs, charts, dynamic parameters, and more. Going beyond the sample reports that ship with the product, Crystal Reports XI for Developers is filled with step-by-step essentials and real-world examples, showing readers how to take full advantage of Crystal Reports key features so they can create information-rich, quality reports from their own data and integrate them into their own applications.

About The Author
David McAmis (Sydney, Australia) is an IT consultant and the author of over a dozen technical books, including Professional Crystal Reports in Visual Studio.NET and Crystal Reports: A Beginner¿s Guide. He is a Crystal Reports Certified Professional (CRCP) and a Business Objects Enterprise Certified Professional (BECP) and trainer; he is a partner in Avantis, a Business Objects Partner. His work has also appeared in various computer magazines and trade journals and he is the editor of Crystal Developers Journal (www.crystaldevelopersjournal.com).

Reader Reviews
This book is not titled particularly well. It does present a good amount of detail about how to develop a report within Crystal Reports--but it does not do a very good job of telling you how to embed those reports into other applications, or how to call the reports from other applications. In other words, if it was titled something like 'Crystal Reports Reference' it would be a pretty good book--but it's definitely not going to serve up the kind of hard-hitting developmental details you would expect for a "developer's guide". If you're looking for a very plain-vanilla introduction to Crystal Reports integration, this is perhaps sufficient. But if you're looking for the nuts-and-bolts of how to actually fully integrate Crystal Reports into your application--this book will dissappoint. I might note, however, that some of the new features of XI are covered in surprisingly good detail. As a previous reviewer has noted, many of the implementation examples do not work or work only with considerable tweaking, and the number of development environments that is supported in the examples is somewhat limited. Comment (1) | | (Report this)