Your One-Stop Guide to Enterprise Reporting with Crystal Reports 2008

Transform disconnected corporate data into compelling, interactive business intelligence using all of the powerful tools available in Crystal Reports 2008. Through detailed explanations, real-world examples, and expert advice, this comprehensive guide shows you how to create, maintain, and distribute dynamic, visually appealing enterprise database reports.

Crystal Reports 2008: The Complete Reference explains how to select and gather pertinent business data, organize it into manageable groups, and assemble it into user-friendly business reports. You will learn how to improve report interactivity with sort controls and the parameter panel; solve complex reporting problems with cross-tabs and subreports; integrate Crystal Xcelsius dashboards; reduce development time; and publish your results to Web and Windows applications.

• Integrate pictures, multimedia files, graphs, and charts

• Allow user-controlled report sorting with new sort controls

• Develop sophisticated formulas and custom functions with the Formula Workshop

• Embed Flash files, including Xcelsius 2008 interactive dashboards

• Create complex cross-tab reports with new derived rows and columns

• Export reports into Word, Excel, Acrobat, and updated XML formats

• Enhance Web interactivity with the new parameter panel and optional parameter fields

• Work with SQL databases, OLAP cubes, and proprietary systems

• Centralize design elements and auto-update reports using the repository

• Schedule and distribute reports with the latest BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0

• Embed reports in Web and Windows applications using Visual Studio 2008

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 3 Ratings

Excellent Resource - 2009-02-05
Reviewer Rating:
The text is one of the first available for Crystal Reports 2008, and is a major revision of much of the same material which has been presented in previous editions (which covered earlier versions of Crystal Reports). As you would expect, it does a solid job of covering all the basics. It even goes into intermediate and some advanced details in a few sections.

If you are a beginner to Crystal Reports, then the book will be an extremely valuable reference to you. Even if you're an experienced Crystal Reports developer or you have used previous versions of Crystal Reports this book will get a lot of use. If you're familiar with the earlier renditions of this book (i.e., for Crystal Reports XI, etc.), then you will find this rendition similar, but greatly expanded and better organized. The book has been through several major revisions and this is clearly evident in the accessible, intelligible, and organized materials. Chapters that have been particularly strengthened from previous editions include charts and maps; a new chapter on integrating with Flash in compelling. Parameters and report export formats are covered in detail. Especially useful is the section on reporting from proprietary (e.g., non-SQL) data sources, including OLAP cubes and .NET integration. Finally, the concluding Formula Language Reference is encyclopedic and authoritative. At about 1,000 pages, the book is really heavy--but really useful, too.

Kindle Version - DO NOT BUY IT, it is impractical - 2009-08-01
Reviewer Rating:
I purchased the paper and Kindle version of this book. The paper version is a terrific reference and 4 stars -- read other reviews, they pretty much summarize it well enough.

However, I would advise anyone NOT to buy the Kindle version. It is entirely impractical and useless in that format.

There is no good index with links to pages, and the table of contents is unwieldy as well. Even in the smallest font possible, the pages are difficult to use.

This isn't necessarily a shortcoming of this book alone -- I've made the mistake of purchasing several reference type books for my Kindle and all of them seem to fail in this delivery format -- but the sheer size of this book makes it ridiculously worse.

Spring the extra bucks for the real book. You will hate yourself for wasting your money on the Kindle version. And (no surprise) you cannot get a refund nor a credit towards the actual book from Amazon.

DON'T DO IT.

Good Book - 2009-04-10
Reviewer Rating:
The book covers a lot of what you need to know to start using Crystal Report 2008. The .NET explanation was pretty good.

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