|
After reading this book and comparing it with the CRYSTAL REPORTS 5.0
USER'S GUIDE and the ADVANCED REPORT DESIGN TRAINING
GUIDE, I found that the book could be useful to
anyone who needs to quickly generate reports in Crystal Reports without spending a lot of time searching the manual for detailed instructions. While it is not a complete document, it does have
enough helpful information and ``How-To's" to aid the user who has not had the opportunity to explore the Crystal Report Writer fully.
Basically, all of the topics of interest to the
user are discussed in this book. The introduction handles a number of necessary topics for a basic understanding of the program. The section ``WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SURVIVE", takes a
good look at the database structure. It describes database tables and the ways a report writer uses them. Another chapter I found especially interesting was the chapter regarding the PGEDITOR
(Chapter 6 GRAPHING DATA). This chapter explains, in a clear and concise method, the options and properties of the PG Editor. The 30 page chapter provides instructions for creating, modifying,
drilling down, changing graphs, and using graph templates.
Other interesting chapters include Chapter 16 ``TEN QUESTIONS TO ASK
BEFORE YOU CREATE A REPORT" and chapter 17 ``TEN
TRICKS TO
ENHANCE REPORTS". These chapters provide you with helpful hints and
suggestions about how to plan and execute the report. These methods help to make the report creation
process more streamlined since important decisions are made early-on ensuring successful results.
Overall I recommend this book to anyone that has not had the opportunity to
take advantage of a Crystal Reports public training course and is interested in
getting started with a basic overview of Seagate Crystal Reports.
Esther Stannard, CrystalUser.com Crystal Reports Trainer |
