 See larger picture | Pro VS 2005 Reporting using SQL Server and Crystal Reports (Pro)
by
Kevin Goff and Rod Paddock
- ApressList Price: $59.99
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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.
Featured Customer Reviews  Inadequate except maybe for school,
May 01, 2008
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. Great book with applicable "real-world" solutions,
December 05, 2007
Kevin is an author that I trust to provide great, helpful information and I look forward to future publications.
Killing two birds with one stone,
June 08, 2007 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.A good book that goes into all aspects of reporting ,
April 28, 2007 Programmers debate endlessly certain topics object oriented design, service oriented architecture, Java vs. .NET, C# vs. VB .NET, IE 7, etc...But a topic that never comes up that should is reporting. As Kevin points out there is more to writing a report than just the time in the designer. So this book fills a very important niche to help make programmers developers and not just code monkeys.
The book starts with some nice pointers to gather the requirements for a report and then it transitions into a pleasant introduction into T-SQL for gathering the data for the reports. Then a large portion of the book goes into some of the infrastructure options going into generating reports, typed data sets vs. un-typed data sets, web services, and remoting. The chapters on Crystal reports are very thorough and leave the reader with a very solid foundation. There is even a chapter that goes into SQL Reporting Services. The book ends with chapters on how to integrate the reporting tool into an application and how to deploy it to clients. There is even a framework with some very nice productivity classes for .NET and Crystal Reports that can be downloaded as part of the code for the book.
If you develop reports or are just getting into developing reports (lots of programmers have to at some point) this is an excellent book to pick up.
 Finally VS 2005 and Crystal Reports - But wrong language,
January 09, 2007
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. :)
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