World Famous Comics: No Stress Tech Guide to Crystal Reports XI: For Beginners
No Stress Tech Guide to Crystal Reports XI: For Beginners
By: Indera Murphy Publisher: Tolana Publishing Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Tolana Publishing Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 520 Publication Date: October 20, 2006
Product Description: If you have been looking for a beginners book that has a lot of easy to understand, step-by-step instructions and screen shots that show you how to complete and master Crystal Reports XI design techniques correctly, this is the book for you. The No Stress Tech Guide To Crystal Reports XI: For Beginners workbook, is a self-paced visual guide to learning Crystal Reports and is written from the perspective that the reader has not created a report before or has not used Crystal Reports. Crystal Reports is the most popular report writing software on the market. Our workbook is for the beginner and intermediate user. To help you become familiar with the options and features, this workbook contains over 600 illustrations that provide a visual tour of the software. Differences between the Standard and Professional editions are pointed out.
fair - but better have som advanced tech background definately not a basic thing.
I still find it easier to do queries in SQL, and then put in excel to prettify. SO the book wasnt that good :)
Book Well Worth the Price I wont bore you by saying 'good for a beginner', you wouldnt be looking at purchasing this book if you already used Crystal Reports. And it wouldnt make sense to buy it just to learn about any upgrades from 8.
For me, Dr. Murphy's book was a real surprise. Really reasonably priced yet chock full of the kind of detail I need to learn an application like Crystal. I just completed Business Objects online training for CR XI to the tune of $1500. I have to say in all honesty that Dr. Murphy's book far surpasses BO's four course package. Hmm, let's see, I guess my employer could have saved about $1450.01 by buying this book first.
Another reviewer complained about reusing reports, a really unfounded gripe, I thought. The nice thing about Crystal Rpts XI is that report titles can include up to 200 characters, so the report builder can name the report very specifically for easy retrieval. At the end of your training with this book, if you work through the examples patiently, you wont need to be saving any of these reports. And if you place them in the Workbench as instructed they are extremely easy to find and reuse if you need to. The screen shots are accurate, the discussion is detailed. She uses humor to kind of lessen the inherent tedium. Im through Chapter 6 now, the only criticism I have so far is that the layout is a little wide on the page for this type of binding. That and the word 'then' is used consistently in place of the word 'than' throughout. A small and excusable error! I have scanned the rest of the book and believe it very closely follows BO's own training, but with a far greater degree of accuracy and detail. I love this book!
An excellent investment This book is particularly good for people who've worked a lot in Microsoft Access and who are just making the move to Crystal Reports because the author is extremely familiar with both applications. I've since added a second Crystal reference to my library, but this book's a great place to start as you're learning Crystal syntax and how Crystal 'thinks'.
A little less than adequate and a little more than annoying 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.
proceed carefully This is the second book I used as a CR developer, and it got me rolling nicely. It could definitely be laid out better for beginners, so it gets 3 of 5 stars.
The information is accurate and extensive. The organization could be greatly improved. It is unclear where the author is explaining and where each exercise begins and ends.
The exercises of each chapter are based closely on the exercises of the previous chapter. If you deviate from an exercise to learn more or just to spice things up, you will be lost in the following chapters, so keep a "plain vanilla" copy of each completed exercise.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
