Reports are of paramount importance for a developer who wants to create successful software. Crystal Reports is an amazing reporting tool because it is compatible with Visual Studio and other developing tools. Crystal Reports is compatible with a lot of databases and is easy to use. It is a powerful reporting tool and can be used to create any report with the least amount of effort. This book is different from other technical books because it not only describes the tools and features in Crystal Reports and Visual Studio, but also contains a sample application with eight reports. Every report has a new idea and teaches the reader a new tool. The reader not only learns to create reports but also learns how to display these reports in Microsoft Visual Studio applications.
Chapter 1, Setting Up the Requirements, will show how to install the tools that we will use.
Chapter 2, Designing a Sample Application, contains a description of the sample application that we will create.
Chapter 3, Selecting the Correct Data, will show how to connect to a database and run SQL queries using Microsoft Visual Studio and also talk about dataset and TableAdapter.
Chapter 4, Creating Your First Report, will show how to create a simple report and display this report in our application.
Chapter 5, Enhancing the Report, will show how to enhance the report using grouping, filters, and subreports.
Chapter 6, Working With Cross-Tab Reports, covers what cross-tab is and describes how to use it.
Chapter 7, Working with Charts, covers the different types of charts in Crystal Reports and describes how to use them.
You will require the following softwares to be installed on your system to run the examples in this book:
Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2012
Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Northwind Database
This book is for developers who are new to Crystal Reports. It will also prove useful to intermediate users who wish to explore some new techniques in Crystal Reports using Microsoft Visual Studio. Readers are expected to have basic knowledge of C#, Microsoft Visual Studio, and Structured Query Language (SQL).
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "After downloading the source, extract it, and double-click on the vs_premium.exe file to begin the installation."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Click on the OK button to save the changes and run the application to test the new appearance."
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