Rating: 
Summary: Am I missing something here?
Review: I read the 2nd Edition. Many other reviewers thought the book was really good. Hm...it has some interesting ideas for additional, future work I would like to do, but ...
1. I found it to be rather disorganized. He jumps around a lot in the book, and sometimes it is hard to follow his examples. He tries to do two things at the same time: explain the different options in Crystal Reports and go through a detailed example (which doesn't cover all of the options).
2. I got off to a bad start in the book right away because he gives the .NET project the same name as the report, which confuses my version of Visual Studio .NET (2003 EA). In the sample code that can be downloaded from Wrox's web site, he uses a different name for the .NET project.
3. His explanation of cross tab reports is a joke (and has some mistakes in it). Fortunately, he uses a good example(s) for the cross tab report(s) and a reasonably intelligent person can figure it out.
4. He doesn't cover some of the "fun" stuff in report design like sizing and aligning report objects. He doesn't give you good tips for rapidly developing reports (other than using the report experts). He has written another book for beginners which I haven't read. Perhaps he covers some of these things there.
5. He could use more examples and more detail on subreports in his book. The reviewer from Singapore, for example, might benefit from that.
6. He does a very good job of reviewing the capabilities of Crystal Reports .NET versus the full retail versions of Crystal Reports like versions 9 and 10.
7. He does a good job of showing how to use Crystal Reports within the Visual Studio .NET IDE (which a lot of reviewers liked). However, he mentions the context menu for the report designer several times but never gives a screen shot of the menu in the book. One of the first things I did was to make a screen shot of that menu by doing a right click on the report I was designing.
8. Folks, if this is the best we can do, I plan to write my own book(s), beginner and advanced.
Rating:
Summary: Am I missing something here?
Review: I read the 2nd Edition. Many other reviewers thought the book was really good. Hm...it has some interesting ideas for additional, future work I would like to do, but ...
1. I found it to be rather disorganized. He jumps around a lot in the book, and sometimes it is hard to follow his examples. He tries to do two things at the same time: explain the different options in Crystal Reports and go through a detailed example (which doesn't cover all of the options).
2. I got off to a bad start in the book right away because he gives the .NET project the same name as the report, which confuses my version of Visual Studio .NET (2003 EA). In the sample code that can be downloaded from Wrox's web site, he uses a different name for the .NET project.
3. His explanation of cross tab reports is a joke (and has some mistakes in it). Fortunately, he uses a good example(s) for the cross tab report(s) and a reasonably intelligent person can figure it out.
4. He doesn't cover some of the "fun" stuff in report design like sizing and aligning report objects. He doesn't give you good tips for rapidly developing reports (other than using the report experts). He has written another book for beginners which I haven't read. Perhaps he covers some of these things there.
5. He could use more examples and more detail on subreports in his book. The reviewer from Singapore, for example, might benefit from that.
6. He does a very good job of reviewing the capabilities of Crystal Reports .NET versus the full retail versions of Crystal Reports like versions 9 and 10.
7. He does a good job of showing how to use Crystal Reports within the Visual Studio .NET IDE (which a lot of reviewers liked). However, he mentions the context menu for the report designer several times but never gives a screen shot of the menu in the book. One of the first things I did was to make a screen shot of that menu by doing a right click on the report I was designing.
8. Folks, if this is the best we can do, I plan to write my own book(s), beginner and advanced.
Rating: 
Summary: The choice in Crystal Reports.Net
Review: I used Crystal Reports in my last job, although I just worked from some reports a friend gave me. I'm now in a position where I need to do my own report development with Crystal Reports in .Net so I bought this book for guidance, and I'm glad I did. The early chapters are fast paced, so you can get to grip with the basics with ease. The later chapters build on this and go into depth discussing formulas, logic and data handling, and I now feel very comfortable in my ability to write reports to impress! Thanks Wrox.
Rating: 
Summary: I could learn more by banging on my head with a shoe
Review: It isn't bad enough that neither Microsoft nor Crystal have a practical approach to help people utilize these two technologies effectively, there are actually people writing books that provide the same disservice to those of us developers that just want task specific answers. The last thing that this book does is demonstrate how to integrate Crystal Reports and .NET for any real world useage. After reading this book I don't know how to display and manipulate reports over the web by utilizing user interactivity through parameters passing, but I can make the background a pretty blue color!
Rating:
Summary: The User's Manual for Crystal Reports
Review: No muss, no fuss, just a short, straightforward exposition of Crystal Reports.Net and how to use it in Visual Studio.Net. This is a thin book (about 300 pages), but it covers both Windows Form reports and Web Form reports. The book won't change your life, but it will get you going on CR.Net. I recommend it strongly.
Rating: 
Summary: It's about the intersection of CR and .NET, not their union.
Review: Page-for-page, I got a lot of value out of this book, and quickly (2 work days, cover-to-cover, running and tweaking the downloaded examples.). It concisely covers exactly what the title says it does - CR.NET - not stand alone CR 9, nor Enterprise. It addresses an issue that both Microsoft and Crystal/Seagate documentation have always given short shrift to in earlier versions of CR - how the tool (CR.NET) is intended to be used in the context of the larger IDE (VS.NET).Still, the bad reviews here are somewhat valid. The important legacy issue of porting old CR 7 and 8 reports into CR.NET is not addressed - even though the topic would be germane to the subject matter. Also, while I haven't had any troubles using SQL Server stored procs in CR.NET so far, I have to agree that the topic is important and germane enough to deserve specific discussion. God help me for saying this about a Wrox title, but it would have been worth making it a little thicker to cover these topics. And hey, it's nice to see Wrox taking the time to let one author write a thin, coherent book instead of rushing out the thick, incoherent collections of chapter-length articles that they usually do.
Rating: 
Summary: Leaves a lot to be desired
Review: The book appears to have been rushed to the publisher. It spends a page and a half on a simple procedure and a quarter page on something very complicated. It goes through "getting started" well but lacks the necessary information to carry the "Professional" title.
Rating:
Summary: Skip steps in examples, difficult to follow
Review: The examples in book are difficult to follow. Many intermediate steps were skipped. I am frustrated, trying to follow examples in the book and do not get the results shown on screenshots. I end up searching Google for answers, which I found all of them. If you plan to pay for this book, my recommendation is getting a copy of table of contents and then searching in Google for the contents. The book should mention (or at least refer to) the setup that makes Crystal Reports .NET work, e.g. where & how to set up IIS, virtual directory, etc. E.g., I can't get the screenshot shown in Figure 5-4 because I do not have the required virtual directory setup. Or, I can't get the screenshot in Figure 10-4 (still looking for answer as of writing).
Rating:
Summary: This is by no means a reference book!
Review: This book glosses over many of the critical details to get your reports running smoothly in .NET. It is a very, very basic tutorial...and that's it.
Rating:
Summary: Great title
Review: This is a great book, it goes straight to the point, is very well written and reader friendly. I bought Peck's "Complete Reference" and would reccomend it as well for learning about report-design, but for VS.NET integration, this is the best.
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