Crystal Reports Books and Crystal Reports 2010

Printed From: Crystal Reports Book — Forum Name: Talk with the Author

Posted By: mdbriggs — 24 Aug 2011 at 6:44am

I have been away from CR for a while and I now find myself on another project which requires me to develop CR's once again. This time the CR report(s) will be quite complicated and require some API calls to retrieve information from the registry to display on the report(s).

From my previous stint with CR I have in my possession the following books:

Crystal Reports Encyclopedia Volume 1: Professional XI Reports

Crystal Reports Encyclopedia Volume 2: .NET 2005/2008

My questions are:

1. Will either of the aforementioned books be applicable for use with CR 2010? In particular Volume 2, which has a section in it that deals with programming the reports for run-time customization

2. If not, is there a book that can be recommended as a resource?

Thanks

Marlon

Posted By: hilfy — 24 Aug 2011 at 7:57am

Most of what's in both books should be applicable to CR 10.

-Dell

Posted By: mdbriggs — 24 Aug 2011 at 9:55am

Thanks for the quick response. It was helpful.

Just another quick question. Is Brian coming out with another book called:

Crystal Reports Encyclopedia 2008/2011?

I saw a listing on Amazon's website and I just wanted to verify if that is in fact the case.

Marlon

Posted By: BrianBischof — 29 Aug 2011 at 12:29pm

Hi Marlon,

Thanks for your interest in my books. Re the existing books, if you're intested in Volume 2 b/c you're writing software, this book is focused on VS.NET only (not Java, PHP, etc.). If you're a .NET programmer, then it goes into extensive detail on writing apps and giving code samples for doing runtime customization.

Volume 1 for CR XI is fine for CR 2010. There are only small differences between the versions. The main tasks of creating and maintaining reports is the same.

The update for CR 2008/2011 should be out by the end of this year. I'm finishing a HUGE project right now for a client and have to get this done before I can start work on updating the book for the latest CR version.

Brian

Posted By: mdbriggs — 21 Sep 2011 at 8:41am

I apologize for not responding to this sooner than now. I thought I had it setup to get an email notification once somebody responded to something that I posted.

Thanks Brian for not your repsonse and for doing such a great job on your CR books. They've been very helpful.

Marlon

Posted By: RobC — 4 Nov 2011 at 5:36pm

If there are not many differences between VS2008 and VS2010, why don't I see references for CrystalDecisions.Shared and CrystalDecisions. CrystalReports.Engine etc. ?

I thought I downloaded the fix from SAP....

Where can I download these ?

Thanks !

Posted By: mdbriggs — 15 Dec 2011 at 12:59am

To get those assemblies to show up under the references you need to do the following:

1. Go to the Project menu

2. Select the [ProjectName] Properties, which will open the Project Properties

window

3. Select the Application tab

4. Change the Target Framework from .NET Framework 4 Client Profile to .NET

Framework 4

Posted By: billev — 18 Dec 2011 at 3:58pm

Hi Brian,

I intermittenly program in Visual Basic.net 2005. We will upgrade to 2011 as soon as it comes out. I have your Book 'Cryatal Reports .Net Programming and it's the reason I use Crystal now.

Since VS no longer incorporates Crystal in VS.net, have you, or do you intend to update your .net programming book?

Here's hoping.

thanks,

Bill

Posted By: BrianBischof — 19 Dec 2011 at 2:36pm

Hi Bill,

I'm glad you like the books! Unfortunately, once MS released SSRS and stopped carrying CR in VS, the sales of my CR.NET books plummeted. I have many hundreds of books sitting in a warehouse right now gathering dust. So I won't be writing about CR.NET anymore.

Brian

Posted By: BrianBischof — 19 Dec 2011 at 2:38pm

Oh - I see that you have the first edition of my book (CR.NET 2003 Programming) that came out. I did update it it CR.NET 2008. So this will have new code examples that might prove helpful.

Brian

Posted By: billev — 19 Dec 2011 at 3:42pm

Brian

Thank you for your response. I've been able to do some pretty neat things with Crystal. Do you think that it might make more sense, if I'm going to use the new versions of VB.net to develop database applications, to convert to ssrs?

Posted By: BrianBischof — 20 Dec 2011 at 11:21am

If you're happy with CR and it does what you need, I wouldn't convert. CR isn't going anywhere (it's owned by SAP now) and it still works with .NET as it did before. The only difference is that it isn't shipped with .NET as part of the standard install. Going with SSRS means relearning everything and dealing with new issues you didn't have before. A lot of work if the tool you use now does what you want it to do.

Posted By: billev — 20 Dec 2011 at 5:14pm

Thanks Brian