Customer Reviews

Crystal Reports: A Beginner's Guide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When I began to use Crystal Reports 4 years ago, there was only one book on the market, which is Douglas Wolf's "Crystal Reports 6 for Dummies". It took me for a while to overcome the bad feeling to join the "Dummy Camp". Well, it's worth to bear the insult. To separate from the "Dummy Camp", I bought George Peck's thick book "Crystal Reports 7: The Complete Reference". To be fair, it's not the right book for learnning Crystal Reports, but a good book for reference. I kept it for more than 2 years, but only used less than 1/3 of it. When I moved to Crystal Reports' Version 8 one year ago, I bought Jill Howe's "Prima's Guide to Seagate Crystal Reports 8" for new taste. I returned it to bookstore in a week. It really disappointed me too much for lack of details. When I saw David McAmis' "Beginner's Guide", I started to wonder if the level is too low to me. Since I didn't want to have another book from Peck, I gave this book a try. It turned to be a good experience. I strongly recommend this book to anybody who is looking for his/her first Crystal Reports book, or a systematic refresher on Version 8.0 or 8.5 in short time. However, this book does have its downside: no advanced topics (for instance, working with Visual Basic or SQL Server's stored procedures), poor proof-reading, and unmatched screen-shoots. However, those are not author's fault. I made my mind to give this book 4.5 stars, but "upgraded" it as 5 - Amazon doesn't allow 4.5.

If you are an absolute beginner with Crystal Reports, this is the book for you. I have no experience in databases (except for Access and Excel), and I've been able to get going VERY quickly with Crystal, creating reports with graphs, totals and some formulas (although I need more practice). The book is easy to follow, but it doesn't help you with your own database-- you may find many skeletons in the closet when you try to find data within your own database... bad data, mixed up data entry, empty fields. Crystal won't fix any of those problems, but at least you can see what's in there.
Its a great little book and maybe one day I will be ready for the big thick one I looked at, but not just yet!

This book needs some serious editing
Right now I'm on Chapter 4 and so far this book is terrible in regards to the Projects. The project instructions don't correspond with the results intended and shown. For example, the instructions say open the Customer by Country report, but then it says 'your report should look like this' and shows you an entirely different report! And sometimes the report you worked on doesn't even work for the task you're trying to learn. The author must have had his friends write the other customer reviews. Don't buy this book! It's just unfortunate though that there aren't many choices.

This book read very easily. he software comes with a sample DB that the book uses which is great. You may find certain reduncies when working on each chapters examples but its so the reader can jump to any chapter. The book is set up so you dont have to staart from the beginning. It took me a little over a month to finish reading the book simply because the software was at the job. You really need the software to make sense of it.
I only wished it delved deeper into table and formulas. But its a beginners book. I recommend it hands down as a starter book

I'm afraid I have to agree with the review from "A reader from Cupertino, CA" - I, too, am on Chapter 4 and am frustrated beyond belief because my reports look very little like the examples in the book so far. In the case of the second tutorial in chapter 4, again the other reviewer is correct - it's not even the same report!

I bought "A Beginner's Guide to JavaScript" by the same company and was thrilled with it. It was clear, concise and had a "mini-project" at the end of each chapter for the reader to complete to ensure mastery of the concept being taught. I was expecting the same thing with this book, and am sorely disappointed. The explaination of each topic is general at best, incorrect at worst, the tutorials are simplistic and don't include half the information being covered in each chapter, if indeed a tutorial exists at all.

I need to get up to speed on Crystal Reports in a fairly short period of time, and be able to generate some fairly sophisticated reports. This book is becoming a hindrance to that goal.

It is a beginners book as the title says, but there is a pittfal, the author should consider for future books.
Not every chapter has a step-by-step tutrial. The user have to download the samples and use them to be able to follow the author, which defeats the purpose of learning by doing.
Chapters 4 & 5 make are mutually exlusive, since chp 5 requires reports from chp 4, that was not a step-by-step tutorial.
Either make it a step-by-step or don't. Just be consistent.

I'm fairly new to Crystal Reports and chose this book to help me get started. I like the layout of the subject matter. It seems well organized with the more advanced topics after the simpler ones. I espicially liked some tips I picked up on how to handle empty address lines. I'd reccomend this book to anyone who is new to Crystal!

I am coming from a VBA background learning about this new software. This book is a great resource tool for making such a transition. Mr. McAmis stepped me through the learning process in a clear and concise manner. The information was learned in progressive manner, in that, the further through the book I read, the more complex issues were handled. At the end each chapter the author challenged me with key questions to help me remember the most important issues.

Crystal Reports: A Beginner's Guide covers everything and more that I wanted to learn about Crystal Reports. The information is easy to digest and there are regular 1-Minute checks along the way. Hands-on experience, in the form of Projects, are dispersed through each chapter (the completed projects can be downloaded from the web). Answers to the Mastery Checks, at the end of every chapter, are given in the Appendix.

My only complaint about the book is that, I feel, there is not enough hands-on experience because the projects are too simple. There are plenty of projects, but most of them are simply a number of steps and very little critical thinking. After reading Crystal Reports: A Beginner's Guide, my knowledge of Crystal Reports has vastly increased though I still have little experience with actually creating reports.

I received/ bought the book in a very good condition and in a very reasonable price. The packing was good as well.
Thanks - I will buy the book from this source with confidence next time.