by Neil FitzGerald, Ryan Marples, Naisan Geula, Bob Coates, James Edkins, Michael Voloshko
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Product Description
Special Edition Using Crystal Reports 10 is a reference guide designed to provide hands-on experience with the latest release of the product suite. The latest version of the Crystal Reporting Suite, delivers vast enhancements that drive upgrades from licensees who'll seek a reference to help them migrate. As Crystal Decisions insiders, the authors bring unique and valuable real-world perspectives on implementations and use of the Crystal Reports product. The book includes content, tutorials and samples for reporting within the Microsoft Visual Studio.NET environment and on the SAP Business Information Warehouse. New content on report distribution, and integration into the secured managed reporting solution known as Crystal Enterprise, is also now included in this definitive user guide.
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Average Customer Review:
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
 Dittos on the Down Side, 2005-11-09
As to what others have said:
A reference - I disagree. Too much talk-talk gets in the way of finding anything quickly. Also the index is not as detailed as the text. For example I don't find an index reference to the "verify database" command but I'm sure it's mentioned in the book (somewhere!!). The Crystal reports online help is much better reference, it's more concise and organized to find specifics, the hallmark of a *reference*
Poorly Written - not.
Tedious - in the extreme.
My Spin:
The book addresses every nit and noid, thus making it difficult to find or learn things quickly. It's like trying to swim across the lake but you have to dive to the bottom constantly. And they bring up so much stuff they end up not really teaching or describing it adequately. I'm not so much learning Crystal Reports as I am being overwhelmed by exposure to every menu item and dialog in the system! It's kinda like an 800 page demo. One thing I am not getting out of this book is how to "program" in Crystal - and as an experience programmer, it's syntax is confusing.
I want to "get started quickly" - after all the basics of CR is rather basic. And later I want to "learn more in depth". And over time I want to look up things I forgot. This book just doesn't cut it.
Finally:
This book is OK if you have the time and patience and need to learn it all from scratch. It very "linear" in my view significantly adding to the tedium factor.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
 Best book I found out there for a novice but poorly edited, 2005-09-02
I am a beginner at Crystal Reports. I bought two other books before this one and I was left frustrated by both of them. I bought this book and within one day I was at least able create and edit reports. But this book is so poorly edited its laughable. It makes learning from this book a lot more difficult than it has to be. The book was obviously written by several different authors, some more capable than others. One chapter I am understanding everything on the first read and the next I am completely befuddled having to reread sections four or five times and finally figuring out what to do on my own. I get the sense that the book was hastily rehashed for this software version and the reader is at times left trying to make sense of instructions for earlier releases. There is hardly any sense of continutiy between the chapters and some exercises refer to prodedures that are yet to be covered. The book is rife with typos and it constantly references illustrations that are located pages away. Whats up with that? It wasn't to save paper. If the redundant paragraphs and unnecessarily wordy sentences were properly edited we could have saved a tree per book.
Que and its parent, Pearson are highly respected publishers. Its hard to believe they would release a $50 book of such poor quality. Nevertheless, the book delivered what I needed. If you are at your wit's end tryng to learn Crystal Reports consider buying this book for lack of anything more understandable.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
 Horrible Book!!!, 2005-07-22
I'm an IT graduate and am very accustomed to reading technical resources. This book is one of the worst I have seen. The screen caps that are referenced in the text are hardly ever on the same page as the text. Lots of the descriptions about radio buttons are a twist on the descriptions given by the environment. Clumsy book. I don't know what to recommend as replacement, but not worth the $50 I bought it for. I wouldn't even pay $25 for it.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
A Tedius and Boring Read, 2005-05-04
I bought this book because of its 5 star reviews. Well, all I can say is, I must have read a different book than the previous reviewers, or they must have been friends of the author, because I can't believe anyone would rate this book highly.
It is long, tedious, poorly written and shows signs of not being proof-read properly:
* Contains lots of lists and descriptions to fill up space without adding conceptual content (do we really need to see every field on a form in a list?).
* Poorly structured. All of the narrative appears at the front of a section followed by examples that don't properly illustrate the text.
* Many examples contain errors and are difficult to follow, again, because they aren't properly tied into the narrative.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 A must read for serious developers, 2004-11-22
I have been working with Crystal Reports and Crystal Enterprise for over 4 years now and this is one of the few books I'd recommend to customers and coworkers who are about to develop distribute complex reporting solutions to a audience of any size. This book covers a great deal of areas and allows the developer to grow from beginner to advanced in a farely short period of time. A must read for anyone who develops reports.
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