Learning Crystal Reports

Roger Wright

How hard is it? I have a couple of copies of it (different versions) that I've never had any reason to try using. Today an excellent job is listed in the paper - Support Specialist for the County Superior Court - which lists among the job requirements a "working knowledge of Crystal Reports." The rest of the requirements are no brainers - HTML, scripting, PCs and networks, that sort of trivial stuff. The pay is excellent, starting $4/hr higher than my previous job, and carrying full benefits. As a bonus, two of the Superior Court judges are friends of mine.:) How much of a challenge is it to pick up a "working knowledge" of CR?

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Paul Watson

As a developer you won't have any problems Roger. There are some "Huh? Why the hell does it work that way!" bits but a working-knowledge level is dead easy. Even programming it is simple enough.

Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa

Crikey! ain't life grand?

Michael P Butler

Crystal Reports is very easy to pick-up... although it does take a while to master. The language syntax (either Crystal or Basic), can be a little frustrating if you are used to doing real programming. I find it a little odd ball. However the sample reports that come with it are a great for hacking apart to find out how something is supposed to work. A lot depends on what "working knowledge" actually means. Does it mean creating reports in Crystal (drag and drop), using the Reporting engine in apps via C++ or VB or being able to do SQL queries to produce the reports. A guy of your experience shouldn't have any problem. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879

Member 96

I have years of experience with it both integrating the engine into apps and developing reports; our main product uses the CR engine to allow our end users the ability to customize reports themselves. Our customers with little experience are able to use it and make their own reports / modify our stock ones with minimal assistance from us, they mostly get hung up on the underlying queries rather than CR itself. It's pretty much all drag and drop and inherent quirkiness of CR itself and the way it does things. An experienced programmer could learn almost everything there is to know about it in about 3 days of on the job work. If you had a copy and experimented with it for a day or so, I wouldn't hesitate to walk into a job interview and look someone in the eye and say you definitely have a working knowledge of it. There are many good examples that come with it and you can use Access as a data source for experimentation if you don't have a SQL server or anything else. Principles are the same regardless of the data store. If you are expected to integrate it's engine into an application that's another story and there is much quirkiness there but most of that revolves around installation, using it in an app is easiest with the ActiveX component, avoid the C++ library if possible, it's been deprecated and is painful to get working.

Lost User

Buy a gun and shoot yourself now... BEFORE you have to fight with Crystal Reports... ;) Save early and often - even the latest version (v9.x) of Crystal crashes for no apparent reason. I feel sorry for you if you accept this job knowing that you have to use Crystal Reports... but at least you've been warned. Steven J. Ackerman, Consultant ACS, Sarasota, FL http://www.acscontrol.com steve@acscontrol.com sja@gte.net

Roger Wright

Considering that I have $40 in the bank, $7 in my pocket, a month's worth of bills on my desk, and no income in sight, I'd try programming Paradox databases with COBOL if it would produce a paycheck. Crystal Reports is no big deal compared to the alternative.

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Shog9 0

...but, if necessary, it's not hard. Just keep well away from any Seagate programmers, lest the courts subsequently need to try you for manslaughter...

Shog9

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong...

Roger Wright

I've met Microsoft programmers in person before, and managed to restrain myself. The new meds work wonders.:-O

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Edward Atwell

Shog9 wrote: Just keep well away from any Seagate programmers I'd like to run into a few of those guys. The average virus writing script kiddie has a more positive effect on my machine. I love all of the registry problems Crystal creates for me. Granted, we are still using version 8.whatever, but still.... Apparently, the good folks at Crystal feel the need to change all the TypeLib permissions in the registry and if you install Crystal before IIS on your dev machine....:mad: I have to stop now, it is only Sunday. I am not allowed to have work related rage on the weekend. Ed Atwell

Jorgen Sigvardsson

It's not hard. But it's utterly boring. At least I think so. Reports have never been in any of my wet dreams anyway. :) -- N = { n_i_ | n0 = 0, n_i_ + 1 = n_i_ + 1, i ³ 0 }

Member 96

Wierd! I've had boatloads of trouble installing the runtime files for version 9, but I've never seen any crashing problems from version 7 to version 9 and I use it all the time.

Lost User

I can empathize with that position - go for it. Crystal sounds like the least of your problems. You can always use it as an excuse if you go 'Postal' ;) Steven J. Ackerman, Consultant ACS, Sarasota, FL http://www.acscontrol.com steve@acscontrol.com sja@gte.net