Customer Reviews

Crystal Reports 7: The Complete Reference

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book a month after buying Crystal Reports (early 1999). I have used it constantly ever since and it has been my primary resource when I use the software on various consulting jobs. The book starts from the beginning and through a series of well defined chapters takes the reader up to an intermediate/expert stage. I taught myself the ActiveX (Visual Basic) module using the book as my primary reference. If you want a real "Bible" on the subject then it must be in your toolkit.

I am an internal auditor and consultant for a large hospital system, and we are undergoing conversions which require working knowledge of Crystal -- like NOW! I have knowledge of SQL from Access and other DSS software, but am certainly no programmer. This book (COMPENDIUM) is perfect! The programmers hired to build the database containing our historical data and set up the connections to Crystal, told us that "they believed that Oracle didn't support inner joins" as an explanation of why triple table joins were not working. Intuitively I knew this was wrong, so I read up on Oracle, and dug into Mr. Peck's book. After digging around in the Crystal options and settings, I read the section in Mr. Peck's book about ODBC drivers. Then I went online with Seagate e-mail support, and sure enough, they sent just the information we needed. Our programmers used an outdated driver that had documented problems with joins. It was Mr. Peck's book that allowed me to (as a layperson) understand the underlying logic and pinpoint the problem. It also explained the logic clearly enough for me to communicate that information to our IS people in terms they could understand. Since they weren't knowledgeable about Crystal themselves, we all benefited hightly. I am recommending that the hospital purchase several copies of Mr. Peck's book for the IS people, and certain power users in Finance. Just this one instance has saved us time and (therefore) money in coming up to speed with data analysis. And considering the size and quality of the book, it's a hot deal anyway. BOTH THUMBS UP!!

There are few technical books on the market that really provide useful information to a developer. This book is one of the few that are complete, organized, and very useful. It covers topics from the introductory level through the advanced level making it a great productivity partner. Clearly and consisely written, it paid for itself in the first hour of use. If you work with Crystal 7, get this for your library.

This is the most complete and detailed document available. Anyone using Crystal Reports should own this. The author's experience with multiple versions of the product and real world customer implementation requirements prove invaluable. Crystal Reports is very feature rich product - the author makes logical sense of everything while still diving deep into the details.

The book covers all aspects of Crystal Reports. From creating a basic report to more advanced reports. It does not cover Crystal Reports formulas thoroughly, so if you want to learn more about creating formulas you may want to get another book in addition to this one. However, you do get fully functional software on the CD ROM that will get you creating professional quality reports in no time at all. This book is definitely a must read for anyone wanting to learn Crystal Reports.

I work with Visual Basic 6 and Crystal Reports for a Fortune 50 company library IT group. The author has answered all the questions I have had with Crystal Reports, Seagate Analysis, and the RDC for VB app integration. His examples are "real-life." I strongly recommend.

This book is great if you want to skip the re-written user manual that Prima offers and all the other 21day dummy books. It goes through features completely in an easy to understand manner. Great book, every Crystal Report using Developer should have this book in his Library.

This book is definetly not for the beginner. The author assumes some experience using Crystal Reports. I learned something new in every section, including the basics. I learned better ways to do some of the most fundamental tasks. Great work.

I was expecting more information out of a "complete" guide. A more accurate title would be "The Developer's Guide To Crystal Reports". Aside from the developer's info tacked on to the end, there is little new information in this book. For the Crystal Reports user, any of the introductory books out will serve as well. In fact, the "Dummies" book actually goes into more depth, for example, about formulas.

For advanced users looking for answers to tough questions, don't bother looking here.

I have never left a comment on a site like this before, but thought my experience was worth it. I usually choose the biggest and most complete guidebooks for everything. In this case, I was completely disappointed. Though this reference might be useful if I were a visual basic programmer, I feel that I spent extra money on a book which I can use only half of. Also, I felt like the author was skipping steps he thought I should know how to do. I had trouble duplicating what was explained. This book might well be great for people who know Visual Basic?? I am computer literate and by no means consider myself a beginner at any software really, but this book made me feel like I was in a league several notches to high. Good luck developers, I wish I could sell my copy on E-Bay!!