No Stress Tech Guide To Crystal Reports XI For Beginners (2nd Edition) (Crystal Reports Series)

If you have experience using Access, SQL or other database software, this is the book to get you started with Crystal Reports. My impression is that those who are not satisfied with this book do not have experience with database development. As an Access user, this book is just what I need to get started.

Let me just start out by saying that this book is in the Top Tier of tech manuals in both its design and its execution. She understands educational theory. In each chapter she makes good transitions from the general to the specific. The numerous tables throughout the book will make this a solid reference book to keep at my desk.I appreciate the fact that she wrote in a conversational style, shared her opinions, and some of the wisdom of her experience. The numerous tables throughout the book that summarize various functions and dialog boxes will make this book will make this a good reference book to hold on to.When my company had Crystal Report 9, I bought both the Dummies book and the SAMs book. Dr. Murphy's treatment of the subject matter is vastly superior to both of these books.There are a few weaknesses that should be mentioned. Some exercises in later chapters build upon exercises completed in earlier chapters. This is OK if you did what I did and start at the beginning of the book and work your way through. If you don't use the naming conventions she specifies, it will trigger problems in later chapters. If you are one who skips around looking for solutions to particular problems, this could be a small obstacle for you. There is a good work around for this. She has worked all of these exercises herself and you can download them from the publisher's website. There are instructions for this on page 1-20. Make sure to put this in a separate folder from the one you are saving your exercises in. You can then just grab her solution from an earlier chapter and go from there.Chapters 11 and 12 (out of 13) are noticeably not as well written as the first 10. By that point, I had gotten used and had come to expect detailed instructions for each procedure. In these two chapters the instructions were a little vague. There are a few places that steps are missing.I spent approximately 3-4 hours working my way through each of the 13 chapters. That included time I spent playing with various functions in order to get a stronger feel for various functions. This book has empowered me to solve several data mining and reporting problems that I had. These advancements will probably save me the time invested this year. The savings and heightened productivity will continue in the years to come. This is well worth it.

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Half-way done the book. Pretty easy to follow, only beef I have is there is no errata notes. Only discovered that after a number of occasions were I didn't follow the discussion and realized they were misprints. Looked for errata, found a link on publishers website but it was dead. Unfortunate!

This book gives you the guidance needed to create your own reports. It is clear and concise.However, I would like to see a CD with examples.

Great tool for beginners and to use as reference tool. would recommend for anyone needing a brush up on the features.

Good book for somebody who has never seen Crystal Reports before. Has some nice turorials and exercises to demonstrate functionality. Also includes data that would be usefull for completing a certification. Would be a good textbook for a high school or college course.

While admitting that this book does have some utility, I would be quick to add that it seems to have been crafted with little thought for the end user. The primary problem concerns the examples. Im all for learning by doing, but the methods used here create more headaches and hassle than a solid understanding of the program features. Essentially the reader is asked to create two or three files at the beginning of the book. Easy enough. Unfortunately the rest of the book consists of the reader making subtle changes to the file(s) again and again only to rename the file something else for each exercise. Can you imagine the number of files in the folder by the end of the book.(and all with a file that looks essentially the same). This gets to be a big headache when your asked to go back and find the old file from a few lessons earlier for the next exercise your planning to work on. This can be especially annoying if your like me and want to skip around and find program features that you might need. Also... Either way you use the book (straight through or hopping around), the examples seem too focused on the same type of tasks and the almost endless formatting changes available in the program. I would have appreciated more substance and less formatting fluff. While working through the exercises, I think I actually spent more time finding the correct file for the exercise compared to actually going through the steps to complete the exercise.One tip. If you buy this book. Do yourself a favor and use their naming conventions to the letter. Otherwise you'll find yourself spending excess time searching for files you previously created for the next exercise.

Great item