Rating: 
Summary: This is only for beginners
Review: "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?
Rating: 
Summary: Pathetic Index
Review: A reference book is only as good as its index. This book has a poor index. Example: Do you know that you want to use the Switch command in a formula but need the syntax, an example, and a couple words of wisdom? Give up. It might be in there but I don't have time to read the whole book to find out. Guess I'll have to limp by with Crystal's HELP. Anyone know of a good Crystal book that helps a guy when building formulas? I want syntax and examples for each function. I would like each function in the index. Where it belongs. Please :)
Rating: 
Summary: Useful tool; a good investment no matter what level you are
Review: After attending Level II and III training, I purchased this book for additional support. It was money well spent; each chapter (so far- I'm only up to Chpt. 13) has at least two useful bits of information you won't get in training or through the online help forum.On the whole, the book was well-written and can kept my attention fairly well. The included CD has necessary reports to illustrate the author's points. Examples point out not only how to best use CR, but why one might handle the software in a particular manner.
Rating:
Summary: Not so great
Review: As a beginner, I have found this book to be very useful and it quickly has gotten me to the point that I need to be at. I can't confirm or deny that this is a complete reference, but I will say that if you're not comfortable with using Crystal Reports, at least start with this book more than any others. This is the one that actually gets your feel wet. As it does walk you through many basic things, it should probably have more of a beginner's title, or a tutorial title - The Complete Crystal Reports Learning Reference, something to that effect.
Rating:
Summary: I'm a beginner, I like this book
Review: As a beginner, I have found this book to be very useful and it quickly has gotten me to the point that I need to be at. I can't confirm or deny that this is a complete reference, but I will say that if you're not comfortable with using Crystal Reports, at least start with this book more than any others. This is the one that actually gets your feel wet. As it does walk you through many basic things, it should probably have more of a beginner's title, or a tutorial title - The Complete Crystal Reports Learning Reference, something to that effect.
Rating:
Summary: Not so great
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Who are you writing this book for?
Review: 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 extensive uses of Access's report objects. Although the Access report object does its job well, it lacks a lot of power features, i.e., limited grouping capabilities, formula in text boxes is limited to a simply expression unless you make a call to UFD, then you would loss your object encapsulation, etc, The Data Report object is VB6 is still some what of a joke, but let not open this can of worms. Thus, I have chosen Crystals reports for my developing needs. I find George Peck's Complete Reference series very helpful. The book has 800 pages to teach me every nuance of Crystal. This book does not teach me anything about VB coding nor does it contain a reference to the object model within the RDC or any of the other object models in Crystal. I didn't buy this book to learn how to code. The author noted in page 659 specifically that the book is not meant to teach you Visual Basic. Overall, this book gets me up to speed quickly and it's a good reference source for my future needs. Personally, I don't find the crystal help files very helpful.
Rating:
Summary: A good reference book
Review: 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 extensive uses of Access's report objects. Although the Access report object does its job well, it lacks a lot of power features, i.e., limited grouping capabilities, formula in text boxes is limited to a simply expression unless you make a call to UFD, then you would loss your object encapsulation, etc, The Data Report object is VB6 is still some what of a joke, but let not open this can of worms. Thus, I have chosen Crystals reports for my developing needs. I find George Peck's Complete Reference series very helpful. The book has 800 pages to teach me every nuance of Crystal. This book does not teach me anything about VB coding nor does it contain a reference to the object model within the RDC or any of the other object models in Crystal. I didn't buy this book to learn how to code. The author noted in page 659 specifically that the book is not meant to teach you Visual Basic. Overall, this book gets me up to speed quickly and it's a good reference source for my future needs. Personally, I don't find the crystal help files very helpful.
Rating:
Summary: Poor Index, Missing key concepts, Garbage...
Review: I frequently use these reviews to select books of all types. I consider myself a power user able to learn rapidly from good texts. This book has not been very helpful for my work in Crystal Reports.
I need to be able to program Crystal Reports to perform a variety of complex reporting on databases that are completely denormalized. Thus, the ability to parse strings and execute stored procedures is critical.
This book completely fails to provide the information about built-in commands that I need. For instance, no information about string commands is present. No discussion of the use of arrays in Crystal Reports is provided.
I was deeply disappointed with this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not much different than Crystal's own manual
Review: 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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