Customer Reviews

Crystal Reports Encyclopedia Volume 2: .NET 2005/2008

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

 

 

This was an excellent book on Crystal reports. The only criticism I had for it was that it should have been titled something like: 'THE COMPLETE USERS GUIDE TO CRYSTAL REPORTS'

It is definitely a 'must have' for anyone learning, or looking for detailed information on, 'Crystal Reports'.

Had the title not been so clinical, it would have been the first, and probably the last book on Crystal Reports I would have had to purchased. Not the fifth!

nuff said ... buy it!

Up until now, there have been no good books written on what goes on 'under the hood' of Crystal Reports when using it with dotNet or Visual Studio.

Brian's book is loaded with great examples and many real-life situations.

IMO, these books that Brian has written are far above superior to any of the other books that attempt to desccribe how Crystal works. And (unfortunately), I've purchased more than a few that helped me not at all. This book paid for itself the first time i opened it up.

This book has been tremendous in answering the little questions. It has a information on how to do many things. One day we were having problems with linkages and by checking this book we aere able to fix the problem quickly. The error was an interpetation of what to connect. This book clearly defined and demostrated how to do the linkage. We have not used many of the features this book explores, but as our project continues over the next two years I am sure we will use this book extensively.

There is no question that the author knows Crystal Reports. It is his presentation that I have concerns with. For one, there is a lack of meaningful examples. He will give an example of a simple report and then when he talks about more advanced features he shows a picture of a different report (how was it generated?). In chapter 4 (Sorting and Grouping) he says to refer to figure 4.4, there isn't any figure 4.4. Also in chapter 4, he talks about Displaying Top N Reports, he states that the report must have a summary field in order to work. Ok, how do you create a summary field? I think the book has the needed information in it but finding it is frustrating. The download examples from his website appear to be written for VS2005, VS2008 will try to convert them but I had a couple of them fail to convert.

We recently migrated our software products from VB6 using Crystal Reports Report Designer Coponent to VB.Net using the built in Crystal Reports component. I honestly don't know what we would have done without this book. The report object model diagrams are worth the purchase price alone. Our reporting is quite complex, and with the help of Mr. Bischoff we were able to accomplish what we needed. Thank you!

This guy is real good. He explains things very well and has excellent examples. One of the few Crystal XI books I can honestly recommend to friends and co-workers. I have had to return several other Crystal books because they were 100% junk. Not this one. I am guarding it and keeping it close.
Only negative thing about this book is people will try to borrow it from you. It is that good. You may need two copies.