Pro VS 2005 Reporting using SQL Server and Crystal Reports (Paperback)

by Kevin Goff (Author), Rod Paddock (Author)
Key Phrases: aging receivables report, base data access class, employee list report, Visual Studio, Cancel Figure, Field Explorer (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Pro VS 2005 Reporting Using SQL Server and Crystal Reports offers a proven methodology for building reporting solutions. The authors focus on SQL Server 2005 and Crystal Reports, but also cover other popular technologies like Oracle and ActiveReports, to give you a thorough grounding in the reporting field. The book presents the requirements for a real-world reporting application in a distributed environment, and covers all the phases of development. Youll learn to

• Define report content, format, definitions, and rules.
• Establish data requirements.
• Build and test stored procedures.
• Construct a data access layer in .NET.
• Account for different architectures using XML web services and .NET Remoting.
• Design the reports using Crystal Reports.
• Develop a Windows Forms client application to allow users to launch reports and set report options.
• Export report output to other sources such as PowerPoint.

In many business applications, reports play a critical role. The stakeholders of a software system expect reports to summarize data and efficiently present it to business users and decision markers. They expect reports to present data in ways they can easily interpret, and in ways that help them evaluate and analyze business performance. Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and Crystal Reports contain powerful capabilities to help you build and deliver sophisticated presentation output. This is the only book available that shows you how to use all these disparate technologies together to create a cohesive solution.

About the Author
Kevin S. Goff is the author of CoDe magazine's The Baker's Dozen series. He selects a development topic each month and writes 13 productivity tips. Most topics cover .NET in some manner. In late 2004, he wrote an article on productivity tips for Crystal Reports in .NET, a subject close to his heart. The article discussed reporting for line-of-business applications, and focused on producing efficient, effective results. The article caught the attention of many people and organizations, and he's been talking to people and building up the ideas for this book ever since.

Rod Paddock is the editor of CoDe magazine. CoDe is well known in the development community, and is on an aggressive path to grow into being the number one Microsoft development community magazine resource.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (November 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590596889
• ISBN-13: 978-1590596883
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #208,338 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Finally VS 2005 and Crystal Reports - But wrong language, January 9, 2007

By	Monty De La Cruz - See all my reviews

I greatly anticipated the release of any new book with Visual Studio 2005 and Crystal Reports. I had to do much of my Crystal Reports development by looking on the internet and a lot of it is for VS 2003.

But I'm a Visual Basic Developer - so I guess either I learn C# or wait for a book that teaches both.

Nothing on the cover says that it is a C# ONLY book. And there was no option to look inside the book - I went on sheer faith...

The book does have a lot of good reading about report technology and a design model to follow when creating reports.

NOW you can read this review if you are a VB developer like myself. And a word of advise - Just Learn C# too. :)

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Killing two birds with one stone, June 8, 2007

By	J. Wood "ITGirl" (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A great help because I originally bought the book for Crystal Report help. Now, my office is switching to Reporting Services and it's been a great guide.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Inadequate except maybe for school, May 1, 2008

By	Pasquale Argenio (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Perhaps some more advanced users will find it helpful. It was not helpful to me because it contains one big example. There are several drawbacks to this approach. Among them are that the explanations all relate to the example and are therefore incomplete. Another drawback is you are stuck reading the book from beginning to end pretty much.

I keep trying to use the book, but it is inadequate for my needs, even after reading it cover-to-cover. I recently tried to find information on Section Expert. This important element of VS Crystal Reports does not occur in the contents or index of the book. The one contents listing for sections explains how to use Section Expert for the example case. This left out a description of more than half of the options available.

The book is obtuse in that it is a cascade of information without an overarching vision. It's not until page 169 that it presents a diagram that shows a system overview. The rest is a lot of details: point here, click there, without a clear explanation of the mission.

WHY am I creating Strongly Type Datasets, what are the alternatives and where in the whole process does this fit in? There is no explanation of the .Designer.cs file that Visual Studio generates. It seems that is essential for populating the report, as it is the report object.

You can't jump in anywhere, as it presents an entire system from the ground up. And it starts at the bottom in the stored procedures in the database and slogs through to the reporting, when it would have benefited greatly from some simpler complete examples, or even the same one, slimmed down to one chapter and then expanded throughout the book.

It also inexplicably devotes chapters to other report engines, when the title contains "Crystal Reports". And it discusses advanced techniques before it has covered all of the basics.

It also, like many, many other computer texts, makes no allowance for maintenance projects. It assumes you are starting out from scratch. Great if you've got that kind of job, but they are extremely rare. More typical is coming into a project or system that has already been build and being asked to maintain or enhance it. This book is worthless for that since it lacks:
1) A roadmap or overview of the possible technologies
2) Reference material or a way to skip around to what you need.

If you are looking for a purely academic book, that you can read in the course of a semester and learn things just one way, this is it.