Professional Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET [Illustrated] [Paperback]

David McAmis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2002

Virtually all applications need to present data to users, but any work beyond basic formatting - charts or conditional formatting, for example - can be very complex to program manually. Crystal Reports is one of the world's leading software packages for creating interactive reports, and it provides developers with an array of tools for creating rich reports that can be published on the Web or integrated within applications. Versions of Crystal Reports have been included with Visual Studio since 1993 but the latest version, Crystal Reports .NET, is now integrated more closely than ever before with Visual Studio .NET.

This book provides a detailed guide to the functionality provided with Crystal Reports .NET and shows you how to integrate reports into your .NET applications. The examples are in VB.NET, but Crystal Reports .NET itself is operated by a clear language-neutral user interface in the main, allowing reports to be created and manipulated in practically every .NET language supported by Visual Studio.

This book covers:

Crystal Reports .NET overview
Report integration for Windows and Web-based applications
Creating XML report web services
Working with .NET data, formulas, and logic
The reports engine
Distributing your application

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book is aimed mainly at readers with some experience of Crystal Reports who want a comprehensive guide to the functionality included with Crystal Reports .NET, but it will also be valuable to programmers who are getting their first taste of Crystal Reports through the Visual Studio .NET development environment.

From the Back Cover

The addition of Crystal Reports 9.0 to Visual Studio .NET 2003 offers developers a reporting tool that allows you to turn almost any data into interactive, dynamic content through portals, wireless devices, and Microsoft Office documents. This code-intensive guide takes you step by step through developing reports and incorporating them into applications.

First, you will gain a thorough understanding of how this version of Crystal Reports differs from previous versions and how it fits into the .NET platform. Then you will begin creating reports and learn how to integrate them into both Windows and Web-based applications. You will explore XML Web services, find out how to work with ADO.NET, and learn to use formulas and logic in your reports. Finally, you will develop distributed reporting applications and discover how to deploy the applications you have created.

Packed with real-world examples of working applications, this comprehensive second edition provides a complete understanding of commonly used features, examples of integration with a variety of databases and platforms, and much more.

What you will learn from t his book

• Advanced report design
• Methods for creating reports using the Expert
• How to integrate reports into Windows and Web-based applications
• Development and deployment of distributed reporting applications
• How to create XML Report Web Services and work with ADO.NET
• Tips for using parameters with Crystal Reports and customizing the report content at run-time
• Options for working with different data sources
• How to use the features contained in the properties, methods, and events associated with the Crystal Reports engine

Who this book is for

This book is for programmers seeking a comprehensive guide to the functionality of Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET. You should have some experience with .NET and Visual Studio .NET. Some familiarity with Crystal Reports is helpful, although this update includes a large section on report design.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 325 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press (October 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861007744
• ISBN-13: 978-1861007742
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,681,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Am I missing something here?, June 27, 2004

By 

David W. Wood (Spring, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET (Paperback)

I read the 2nd Edition. Many other reviewers thought the book was really good. Hm...it has some interesting ideas for additional, future work I would like to do, but ...
1. I found it to be rather disorganized. He jumps around a lot in the book, and sometimes it is hard to follow his examples. He tries to do two things at the same time: explain the different options in Crystal Reports and go through a detailed example (which doesn't cover all of the options).
2. I got off to a bad start in the book right away because he gives the .NET project the same name as the report, which confuses my version of Visual Studio .NET (2003 EA). In the sample code that can be downloaded from Wrox's web site, he uses a different name for the .NET project.
3. His explanation of cross tab reports is a joke (and has some mistakes in it). Fortunately, he uses a good example(s) for the cross tab report(s) and a reasonably intelligent person can figure it out.
4. He doesn't cover some of the "fun" stuff in report design like sizing and aligning report objects. He doesn't give you good tips for rapidly developing reports (other than using the report experts). He has written another book for beginners which I haven't read. Perhaps he covers some of these things there.
5. He could use more examples and more detail on subreports in his book. The reviewer from Singapore, for example, might benefit from that.
6. He does a very good job of reviewing the capabilities of Crystal Reports .NET versus the full retail versions of Crystal Reports like versions 9 and 10.
7. He does a good job of showing how to use Crystal Reports within the Visual Studio .NET IDE (which a lot of reviewers liked). However, he mentions the context menu for the report designer several times but never gives a screen shot of the menu in the book. One of the first things I did was to make a screen shot of that menu by doing a right click on the report I was designing.
8. Folks, if this is the best we can do, I plan to write my own book(s), beginner and advanced.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth the money, October 20, 2005

By 

Abalas Olpo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

This book has an annoying trait of explaining super basic things as if you had no knowledge of computers. It tells you step by step how to add a project. Select File -> New -> etc. Which is fine if all material is covered with this detail. But it's not. The harder stuff is, or this stuff that's is impossible to arrive at with clicking, is glossed over. For instance, there's a section that tells you how to use Crystal Parameters with values entered in a textbox. A very useful thing. The explanation is laborious on how to add components on the form but when he gets to the code part, he says, "You can now use this code to set you parameter fields" No mention of where this code goes. How could they assume you've never turned on a computer before with the Select File -> New bit and then assume you know where this code goes. It makes this book useless. It's one of things that is just infuriating. Who do they think the audience is for this book? If you know VS you know how to add a project, for Christ's sake. If you know Crystal you know how to make parameters. The reason you buy this book is to see how the two work together. WTF!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The choice in Crystal Reports.Net, November 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Professional Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET (Paperback)

I used Crystal Reports in my last job, although I just worked from some reports a friend gave me. I'm now in a position where I need to do my own report development with Crystal Reports in .Net so I bought this book for guidance, and I'm glad I did. The early chapters are fast paced, so you can get to grip with the basics with ease. The later chapters build on this and go into depth discussing formulas, logic and data handling, and I now feel very comfortable in my ability to write reports to impress! Thanks Wrox.