Crystal Reports Reference
Excellent! this book is ideal for the novice. I am using it to teach myself Crystal Reports and have found it to be a great reference. I am doing things in crystal reports on my project that even the seasoned developer has not ever tried. I highly recommend this book.
Review of order
Although I have not had occasion to use this book much since its arrival, it is chock full of information and seems like the ideal reference book for Crystal users. I have just upgraded my Crystal software from version 9 to version 11 where I needed to see differences between the products. This book will be an ideal reference for me in future development of reports.
Book, good. Crystal Reports, bad.
I had Crystal Reports more than probably anything on the planet. I am biased towards web reporting in that it is where I have to spend my time. Crystal Reports itself may be fantastic in other formats, but for the web reporting, it is horrible.
That said, it also has some pretty poor documentation and support, so that means books like this are essential.
So the book itself is fantastic and you shouldn't be using Crystal Reports without it.
Note that there are many areas not covered by the book in the web reporting wold, and so you will still need to do many Google searches to figure out what is going on, and in the end many times the issue is that Crystal Reports is just buggy.
Occasionally they will patch something, and then it will be less buggy, but then things that previously worked will not, and this book will not (and really can't) account for those changes - so even with this book, you will need other reference resources as well.
Lots of information, but not as helpful as it should be
This book does have a lot of information. However, of course it's not 100% complete, if that means answering every question anyone will have.
There is a lot of information in this book. However, time and time again I find it not answering my questions. It needs a lot more "fill in the gaps" information about how Crystal Reports works, and the context for what is going on. The author needs to step back in many cases and consider what questions a newbie might have about the topic being discussed.
Good help crystal developers
This book is very exhaustive and a good reference for those new to the crsytal report world.The only thing I wud have like to see more in this is some more features for business object servers and deployment of crystal reports into business objects. Though same publication has a separate detailed book on Business object but its always helps if few more basic features included here as well.Overall its a good one for new crystal developers.
