Crystal Reports .NET Programming [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Brian Bischof (Author) "Visual Studio.NET is the first Windows development that gives developers a fully integrated and robust reporting solution..." (more)
Key Phrases: subreport name, web viewer control, other report objects, Crystal Decisions, Private Sub, Visual Studio (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
I wrote this book from the perspective of a programmer wanting to learn how to integrate reports within a .NET application. I've been working with Crystal Reports since Visual Basic 3 and it's always been difficult to find technical information on report writing. I spent a year and a half researching what .NET programmers need to successfully create, implement and deploy a Crystal Reports application. I even put the book on the internet for everyone to read for free all of last year. This generated an incredible number of emails from programmers telling me what they liked, disliked, and what was missing from the book. I learned that there are two distinct types of .NET programmers using Crystal Reports. The first type of programmer doesn't have much experience with Crystal Reports and wants a series of tutorials to help them build reports from scratch. For this programmer I wrote 13 chapters which teach you everything about adding reports to ASP.NET and Windows applications. It starts with the basics of building reports to adding charts, crosstab reports, sorting and grouping, subreports and using the formula editor with Basic syntax and Crystal syntax. The second type of programmer has been using Crystal Reports for years and is mostly concerned with how to do technical runtime customization of reports. For this programmer I researched and diagrammed the undocumented report object models. I included dozens of examples in both VB.NET and C# to show you how to modify reports, manipulate different data sources (XML, ADO.NET, ODBC, OLE DB, stored procedures with parameters), modify formulas and report parameters, and integrate .NET with the RAS and RDC. The dozens of emails I received when the book was online were instrumental for doing a major revision of many chapters before publishing the book in hardcopy format. Since releasing the book I continue to receive more emails from people. They regret that the free book isn't online anymore, but understand that it couldn't last forever and that the hardcopy version is even better. I hope you like it and that it helps you achieve your reporting goals. September 2004 Update: Due to high demand, I did a second printing of the book. I took advantage of this opportunity to go through the book and remove all grammatical errors. The content is the same, but the typos have been corrected.

About the Author
Brian Bischof is the author of The .NET Languages: A Quick Translation Guide and Professional Visual Studio .NET.

Product Details

• Paperback: 525 pages
• Publisher: Bischof Systems; 1 edition (March 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974953652
• ISBN-13: 979-0974953655
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #472,179 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top notch. Don't wring your hands, just buy this book., March 12, 2005

By	Software Guy (South Florida, Center of the Universe) - See all my reviews

I cannot believe anyone who has actually read this book has given it less than 5 stars. I am a veteran software engineer and application developer who has been using CR.NET from day one of its existance (and many other report writers long before it). Nonetheless, it is ridiculous how much I have learned from this book. Let's face it, the MSDN content on Crystal Reports for .NET is weak; I know, because I have read all of it. This book not only fills the gap, it cracks the walls on both sides.

This is the only book on the planet that covers CR for the Visual Studio developer this well. If you use Visual Studio, no matter which language, and you use Crystal Reports, you need this book. And don't use the excuse that it is too late in the cycle for the current version and you are waiting for VS 2005, and the 2005 version of this book. If you have to write any new reports with CR.NET between now and when 2005 ships, this book will a) save you a lot of time and b) make your reports better than before. The $25 this book costs is a joke for the value packed in these pages.

Final note: Brian has self-published a technical book that shames the major publishers of technical books available today. You can really tell that this was something he worked very hard on to get right and he succeeded in a big way. Encourage him to do this again; buy the book if you need this valuable info.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable as tutorial and as a reference, June 1, 2004

By	Richard J. Dudley (Butler, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Let's get this straight from the beginning--this is not a book about Crystal Reports 10, nor Crystal Reports 9. This is about Crystal Reports .NET, which is a different version altogether. The second part of this book does a great job of discussing the rich programming model of the CR.NET engine, and also indicates clearly the limitations of the CR.NET engine (CR.NET is far more limited than CR9 or CR10--that's why it's bundled with Visual Studio). The first part of this book is a very good resource for people who have not worked with Crystal Reports Design, or may be new to the Visual Studio interface. The numerous examples are given in both C# and VB.NET. This book was self-published and self-edited by the author, so you'll find an occasional typo. Save your money on the WROX Press book by David McAmis--that one is far more riddled with errors far less useful.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If only someone at Crystal could write like this!!!, July 10, 2004

By	Stephan Onisick (Birmingham, AL) - See all my reviews

A GodSend!!

After spending $2000 for Crystal 10 Enterprise-I was appalled by the lack of documentation, examples and tutorials.
(I did find some examples on the Crystal Decisions website but had trouble translating them to my specific programming tasks.)

Most Crystal Report Books spend a lot of time on the Report Designer which in my humble opinion, from a programmer's perspective, is superfluous.

Brian excels in both explaining Crystal Reports and integrating it into .Net for programmers.

Brian gives you the object model and examples of specific methods. These are readily useable from VB.Net to ASP.Net.
By explaining the inner workings of Crystal; e.g., the two-step processing of report data, the reader can understand differences between items such as subtotals and running totals.

Within about 2 hours after perusing his chapter on exporting and deploying, I was able to set up a report in an asp.net application (with a few adjustments).

Consider me a fan. I look forward to other works from Brian.

I will do all I can to make his self-publishing profitable.