Crystal Reports 8.5: The Complete Reference: Amazon.ca: George Peck: Books

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The most definitive resource on Crystal Reports available! Create presentation-quality reports using the most powerful data analysis tool and this comprehensive guide. Crystal Reports 8.5: The Complete Reference explains in detail how to use the software to analyze and format data, generate reports, and perform advanced interactive reporting from the Web. Also, learn to develop custom applications and incorporate any Crystal Report into your Windows applications.

Book Info

The most definitive resource on Crystal Reports available. Explains in detail how to use the software to analyze and format data, generate reports, and perform advanced interactive reporting from the Web. Softcover. CD-ROM included

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Businesses, large and small, continue to find new innovations for personal computer-based information systems. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews

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3.4 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)

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1.0 out of 5 stars This is only for beginners, Aug 15 2002

By

Travis (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crystal Reports 8.5: The Complete Reference (Paperback)

"The Beginners Guide to Crystal Reports" would be a more apt title. I purchased this book to learn how to integrate Crystal Reports into a VB 6 application. I wish I hadn't opened the example CD, because now I can't take it back. I outgrew this book after two days. Information on the RDC, the component used inside VB to create Crystal Reports, is vague and provides few examples. Information on connecting to remote databases over a network and exporting reports from an application is also nil. At least, I don't THINK this book contains any of that information. I use a lot of different computer books and I can't remember ever seeing a worse index. It's practically worthless. This book would only be good if you wanted a brief overview of Crystal Reports. But then- why would you buy a book?

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not much different than Crystal's own manual, Mar 14 2003

By

H. David Peirce "Zossima" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Crystal Reports 8.5: The Complete Reference (Paperback)

I purchased this book as a reference. Fortunately, I had a separate training course for learning the Crystal application. And I now teach the product.

It's a good reference. I truly haven't had a question yet regarding basic or advanced procedures in the application that I couldn't find. But I would not recommend it for learning the application. It is dense.

I'm also disappointed that it is not very different from the CR 8.0 manual published by Crystal Decisions. The layout and procession of the book are virtually the same! It could have included more tutorials, too.

One thing that I would love for any CR reference/manual to include is a list and description of all the formulas in the system. To my knowledge, this does not exist anywhere, even in Crystal's own documentation.

PURCHASING RECOMMENDATION
If you need a solid reference and didn't purchase manuals with Crystal, this will work. If you need to learn the product, get something else.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Who are you writing this book for?, Nov 12 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Crystal Reports 8.5: The Complete Reference (Paperback)

After reading positive reviews of this title, I decided to purchase the complete reference and was extremely disappointed. The most common problem with crystal books (or any other software application manual-excel, access, etc.) is that the author try's to appeal to all crystal report's users. There are generally three types of software user's out their, 1. database administrator/computer programmers who want reference manuals with excellent indexes. 2. Basic users who can get by with your classic "for dummies" title. 3. User's who don't understand VBA or SQL but want to be able to create reasonably advanced adhoc reports.
This title is to basic for the database administrator who would have to read 4 pages of babble to find the specific piece of information they need. There are no practice assignments for the beginner/intermediate report writer to do just that "practice". And when you do find a title that contains tutorials/assignments they are often to basic and lack real relevance in the business world. With the number of access, excel, crystal, etc. titles on the market you would think that there would be enough room to specifically appeal to the different types of software user's out their.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A good reference book
I develop financial reporting applications for various companies using VB and VBA. Recently I have completed a financial reporting system completely within Access 2000 making... Read more

Published on Mar 30 2003 by Allan Lee

1.0 out of 5 stars Not so great
As you become more and more proficient, this book is more and more frustrating. There are so many things just touched on and not explained or not in the book at all!

Published on Dec 10 2002