Customer Reviews

Crystal Reports 9 on Oracle

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This book contains everything that I needed to extend my existing Crystal Reports 9 development knowledge into the Oracle DBMS realm. As an experienced CR developer, but one without any previous experience with Oracle as the back-end, this reference provided the necessary overview of the Oracle system along with sufficient supporting detail - to allow me to quickly acquire the skills to competently utilize the Oracle system in general, and some of its more advanced features on particular: Stored Procedures as datasources, REF Cursors, the MINUS Set Operation, Materialized Views ...

Having performed several searches of the Crystal Decisions knowledge base for detailed guidance in using Oracle Stored Procedures (and Packages) as a datasource and coming up short of the desired comfort level - in terms of the breadth and depth of coverage, this reference proved invaluable in my last CR consulting engagement. As an added bonus, Annette Harper responded personally to my email requests for clarification in areas that a more sober reading (one performed outside the deadline pressures of an existing consulting engagement) would have allowed.

In short, and speaking from the perspective of an experienced CR developer with decent DBMS skills in general, this book made it possible to comfortably and competently transition to using Oracle as the back-end data store.

Crystal Reports 9 on Oracle is an excellent book written by Annette Harper. Every report writer will benefit from the in depth coverage of how to write effective reports by best utilize Oracle 9i database features from new Oracle 9i analytical SQL functions, PL/SQL, materialized views, external tables, flashback queries, etc. to Oracle optimization techniques. The book's expert insight into Crystal Reports 9 optimization tips, Data Dictionary report and Crystal Reports 9 repository will empower Crystal Reports writer to fully utilize Crystal Reports 9 and create faster, better reports.

This book by Annette Harper is one of its kind in the market.It explains the various ODBC drivers by a comparitive study which gives us a very good idea as to which driver we should use.
The book is very helpful for people who are writing Crystal Reports against Oracle Database.

I recommend this book to any one who needs to connect from Oracle to Crystal Reports. This author has presented an outstanding description of what to do. In addition the review of the Oracle SQL syntax is one of the best I have read. Other books I read give the same tired examples that appear in the official Oracle books without. The author has included an entire database with some complex examples on who to optimize the code for Crystal Reports. We are on version Crystal Reports 2008 and Oracle 11g, but the vast majority of the information is very relevant. A good book for reference.