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Summary: Praise for Crystal Reports .NET Programming
Review: Brian Bischof did a fantistic job on this book. I wasted days searching for the solution to passing the path of an access database to my distributed application using Crystal Reports. DAYS! And his straight forward clear explanations had me up and running just a few minutes after I cracked the book. For anyone intergrading CR into a .NET application, this book is a Must. Apress deserves a kick in the ... umm ... head, for pulling the contract on this book. Thank you Brian for persevering and publishing it anyway. I'd buy it for twice the price.
For those folks that are hung up on a few typos, get over it! The value of the information in this book (and available no where else I might add) far out weigh the minor grammatical errors.
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Summary: If only someone at Crystal could write like this!!!
Review: 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.
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Summary: Just what I was looking for
Review: As a developer new to the .net world and Crystal Reports I was overwhelmed by the task of creating an application using both with just the help files.
Brian Bischof has done an excellent job of explaning and demonstrating solutions to this daunting task. This book is one of the best at getting to the meat of the matter I have read. After explaining the task to be tackled, there are excellent examples and sample code.
Thanks for writing this book, it has saved me from hours of frustration!
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Summary: Incredible resource!
Review: Brian Bischof first posted the contents of this book to his web site after the publisher backed out, claiming that the market was saturated. (Note: that is my interpretation. I'm not a party to the deal so I could be wrong.) In either case, I disagree. While the market on .NET books is quite competitive the market on well written .NET books centering around Crystal Reports is most certainly not! This book covers everything you'll need to know about Crystal Reports and using them inside the .NET Framework in all capacities. It is divided into two parts. The first is a general introduction to Crystal Reports .NET and reporting in general; the second is advanced details about the underlying object model, integration with future flavors of Crystal Reports, and more. The book abounds with screen shots, but each screen shot is clearly explained. This is not a "screen shot to increase page count" book; this is a "screen shot to help clarify" book. I personally enjoy a large number of screen shots because it helps me transfer information to newer versions or releases of products. If an author explains a dialog poorly the screen shot allows me to see clearly where it is, what it has, and other items of interest that may help me locate its equivalent. Other nice features are a complete chapter on dynamic data sources, coverage of parameters, coverage of stored procedures, extensive code examples, and a good deal of useful information regarding working with Crystal Reports functions. Part of the reason I think this book is so informative is that it was reviewed by the Crystal Report .NET community at large and from what I gather a large amount of feedback was generated that was taken into account. The only book I've found that comes close to this one in terms of usefulness in regards to Crystal Reports .NET is Wrox's Professional Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET. Wrox's book did not have the depth that Crystal Report .NET Programming does; however, anyone considering this book as an addition to the Wrox book should note that it moves forward on the same basic premise. There is no coverage of importing existing reports or infrastructures into Crystal Report .NET. A good majority of the book is aimed at creating new. (Porting between CR9 Enterprise and CR.NET for me has been mostly a loss of superfluous formatting; the data has remained intact. I have not used Crystal Reports 8, and my Crystal Reports 7 experience was a long time ago at a former employer.) I have not found any other books exclusively centered on working with Crystal Reports inside the Visual Studio environment. Other books will include a chapter on this integration but focus mainly on the Professional, Developer, or Enterprise versions of Crystal Reports. Reporting is a fact of life. Our suits aren't going to let us put together new toys unless those toys spit data back out at them. This book will show you how to do that and much, much more. Why such an effusive review? This book has saved my bacon many times in web form. The dynamic data source issue crops up at my current place of employment continuously - people always want to move data around, here to there. The entries here were instrumental to me actually understanding how CR worked with data sources, and how I could manage it. (...) Miscellaneous notes: The font is nice, large and clear. Some of the screen shots get a little fuzzy but never unreadable. The charts included (for the object model) are especially helpful when you're feeling your way around. The book is extremely nice and feels right in my hand. The binding is probably my biggest complaint because it resists the "prop open with two other books" method I use. The web form of the book I refer to is no longer available to my knowledge; it was up for review and critique while Brian Bischof finished writing the book in question.
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Summary: The Best Crystal Report Reference
Review: I was very impressed with how well written this book is. The information is presented in such a way that even beginners can quickly learn how to create useful reports, but is complete enough that seasoned developers will find a great deal of value here. I definitely think that this book would benefit not only .NET programmers, but also anyone using any version of Crystal Reports. Even though I am familiar with much of the information in this book, I found a number of helpful tips. I was amazed at how informative this book is considering its size. I also have the George Peck books for both CR7 and CR9. Peck's book has been a recommended resource for CR developers. Mr. Bischof's book presents all of the topics in a much more concise manner. This is one of the few books I've found specifically geared towards CR.NET programmers. I like the screen shots, the tips (and cautions) and the footnotes. I especially like that Mr. Bischof took the time to list out properties and methods, etc., along with their descriptions. I've seen too many books that direct you to the spot where you can set a property and then leave you to search out information about the properties and what the parameters are. I also think that a good many programmers will be happy that he included both the VB and the C# code. I like that they are in separate areas. I've seen books that explain that the particular language used is unimportant to the concept being presented. Then, in order to show no partiality to a language mix the languages in their samples, jumping from one language in one sample, to another language in the next. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who uses Crystal Reports or would like to learn more about it in order to add this tool to their repertoire. Crystal Reports seems to be the world standard for reporting tools and this is the book I will be using as my primary reference from now on.
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Summary: Excellent Crystal Reports .NET Book
Review: I'm new to Crystal Reports .Net. To be more precise, I'm new to the whole .Net framework. Currently i'm using the book at my internship and it's helping my out ALOT. I've read several of the reviews for this book from grammatical errors to the author used the wrong font. First of all, the author wrote this book about Crystal Reports .NET, not Crystal Reports 9 or 10. There is a difference. Secondly, the author has a section within the first few pages of his book addressing the grammatical errors called "Grammatical Errors" (In Bold). After all, he did self-published the book and editing your own work is extremely hard. So those who were commenting about that are taking this review a little bit too seriously. Yeah, the terminology ("web page" should be "ASP. NET Web App") is probably wrong but as you read on you'll know exactly what he means. As far as examples, when you install Crystal Reports .Net it comes with example reports to work with. The author guides you on how to retrieve them in the first chapter of the book. He even gives you the full file extension (if you didn't change the default) of the report's location. Anyhow, Crystal Reports .NET programming is an excellent book/reference for first time users AND professionals even though I don't consider myself to be one. He goes into detail as to what each Taps, components, viewers, and other features do; and how and when to used them. The codes given in this book are well explained and easy to follow. Most codes access features that other books do not go into. It is a well written, extremely thorough and comprehensive yet not too technical for first-time users to understand book to have and its well worth the listed price. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to use Crystal Reports .Net.
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Summary: Invaluable as tutorial and as a reference
Review: 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.
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Summary: Invaluable as tutorial and as a reference
Review: 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.
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Summary: Just Put Online Help in this book!
Review: Please don't waste your money on this book! It just put MSDN and Crystal Report online help into this book! The examples are also very poor. The author doesn't understand Crystal Report.NET and Visual Studio.NET very well. He just copy some examples from online help or from website because I asked him some questions. Although the book already has the contents, he responsed he doesn't know! I understand why the publisher doesn't want to publish it!
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Summary: One of the worst computer books I've read.
Review: Poorly written, very little, if any, useful information. Some pages are half-blank! The book has a very poor layout. And a lot of the pages are wasted by extra large screen shots. No good examples to follow. The features are explained but the examples are poor. Just opening the program and playing around with it, trying some examples I found on the web, was more useful than this book. I'm going to have to buy the Wrox book now. I had a peek at it in the book store and I liked it.
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