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 book (2nd Edition) , is a self-paced visual guide to learning Crystal Reports. It is written from the perspective that the reader has not created a report before or has not used Crystal Reports. This book is for the beginner and intermediate user. To help you become familiar with the options and features, this book contains over 600 illustrations that provide a visual tour of the software. If you have used a previous version of Crystal Reports and just want to learn about the new features in Crystal Reports XI or Crystal Reports 2008, see ISBN 978-1-935208-01-3.
Jonathan-Medina
Posted Fri Aug 13 00:00:00 EDT 2010
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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Overview
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 book (2nd Edition) , is a self-paced visual guide to learning Crystal Reports. It is written from the perspective that the reader has not created a report before or has not used ...