Crystal Reports XI for Developers [Paperback]

David McAmis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1584504110 | ISBN-13: 978-1584504115 | Publication Date: November 21, 2005 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

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, Crystal Reports: A Beginner's Guide, Exchange 2000 Administrators Guide, Exchange Server 2003 Delta Guide, and How to Do Everything with InfoPath 2003. He is a Crystal Certified Consultant, a Crystal Certified Trainer, and a Crystal Solutions Partner, and his work has appeared in various computer magazines and trade journals.

Product Details

• Paperback: 447 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1 edition (November 21, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584504110
• ISBN-13: 978-1584504115
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,080,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Cross-platform Development

More About the Author

David McAmis is a solution architect, consultant, author and educator with over 14 years of experience with BusinessObjects technology, working with clients in the US, Australia, Thailand, Korea and Hong Kong.

David is considered to be an expert in the field of business intelligence. He has developed an impressive reputation with the SAP BusinessObjects range of products and has written over twenty computer books, with six focused on SAP BusinessObjects technology.

As the Technical Director at an SAP BusinessObjects Gold Partner he fulfils the roles of enterprise architect and Business Intelligence (BI) Evangelist and brings to bear experience across a wide number of platforms, databases and ERP systems (including SAP, JD Edwards and Baan) to deliver innovative solutions for common business problems.

David has travelled the world educating developers and end-users on the benefits of business intelligence and information management. Over the course of his career, he has instructed over 2,000 students in the use of the SAP BusinessObjects suite of Business Intelligence tools. He is a certified trainer and teaches courses on behalf of SAP as well as on-site training courses.

He is an SAP Certified Application Associate (times 4) for Crystal Reports, BusinessObjects Enterprise, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence and BusinessObjects Data Integrator.

David has written over 600 articles for computer magazines and trade journals and is a recognized expert in business intelligence and information management. His books on Crystal Reports are consistent best-sellers and he is a frequent conference speaker.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Weak on Development Details, June 14, 2006

By 

Clark B. Timmins "q-25" (West Jordan, UT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crystal Reports XI for Developers (Paperback)

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.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy this book - It is a waste of money, March 17, 2006

By 

R. Weight "FisherRon" (Utah) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Crystal Reports XI for Developers (Paperback)

This book is supposed to be for developers. It's supposed to help you learn how to integrate Crystal XI with your application. DO NOT USE THIS BOOK! It is totally wrong when it comes to telling you how to do it.
Example (pg. 276-277) Explains how to view a report using just a line or two of code. Here's the code: CrystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = "D:\projects\dynselect.rpt"
It says to add this line in the Form_Load subroutine. Even after making sure the path was correct (mine was C:\Test\dynselect.rpt) it DOES NOT WORK! It comes up with an Invalid Cast Exception. You cannot simply pass the ReportSource property a string. It expects something else. I'm not sure what it expects (it looks like it needs a report object passed to it), but the book certainly doesn't have any clue.
This is totally inexcusable and renders the book useless for anyone wanting to integrate reports into their application.

It ignores Visual Basic 6 (which may be OK for some folks, but certainly made me upset - I still use VB6). There is supposed to be a web site that gives more help and resources from the book, but that is a joke as well. It has a single page that says that it will be ready by December 2005. It's way past that now and still nothing there (http://www.crystalxibook.com)

I can not imagine how this book got published when it is just plain wrong. I gave it 1 star only because the information about using Crystal XI is OK as long as you don't plan on using it in your application. Since this book is supposedly for Developers, even 1 star may be too many.

If you want to use Crystal XI to just create reports, not actually use them, then this book may help.
Otherwise, I would skip it and look for something else.

I will be returning this book.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible Book, July 17, 2007

By 

J. Lawlor (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crystal Reports XI for Developers (Paperback)

Return this book if you've bought it. I bought a copy of this book without reading deeply into(my mistake) cause it looked like it would be useful. I am a C# developer and need to generate some Crystal reports for the project. When I got the book and started reading/looking up info, I found something startling. All of the Code Examples in the Book are VB. Now this doesn't sound bad if your a VB person, but it included C# Examples that were actually VB Code. This was amazing, I'd never seen a mess up by an editor like this. I returned this when i saw it and got a different book that actually had C# in it. Worst Book ever....