Crystal Reports XI Official Guide

You can find various supporting material that will assist you in the completion of the exercises in this book, as well as supplemental documentation on related topics. You should have access to a computer that has at least a 450MHz Pentium II or equivalent processor, 128MB of RAM, and Windows 2000, Windows 2003, or Windows XP Professional.

Web Resources

You can find all the source code and report samples for the examples in the book, as well as links to great external content, at www.usingcrystal.com. You'll find report samples to download and code for you to leverage in your report design and sharing efforts. Also, a great deal of additional product-related information on the Business Objects suite of products including Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, OLAP Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence, Crystal Reports Server, and BusinessObjects Enterprise can be found at www.businessobjects.com.

Intended Audience

This book was written to appeal to the full range of Crystal Reports, OLAP Intelligence, Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports Server, and BusinessObjects Enterprise users. You'll find this book useful if you've never used the Business Objects suite of products before, if you are a mature Crystal Reports user looking for some new productivity tips, or if you want to explore some of the new features found in version XI and their related SDKs.

You don't have to be an expert, but you should have a basic understanding of the following concepts:

• Database systems such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, and Informix

• Operating system functions in Windows 2000/2003/XP

• General Internet/intranet-based concepts such as HTML, DHTML, ActiveX, and Java

The first four parts of this book build on each other, so skipping around those parts isn't the best approach unless you have some familiarity with Crystal Reports XI. Even if you are familiar with Crystal Reports, many new features have been introduced in recent versions, so you are encouraged to read the entire first half of the book so that you don't miss anything. The second half of the book is focused on the different forms of content delivery and each part can be approached independently without loss of context.

Requirements for This Book

To get the most from this book, you should have access to a computer that has at least a 450MHz Pentium II or equivalent processor, 128MB of RAM, and Windows 2000, Windows 2003, or Windows XP Professional.

All reports are based on sample data that is installed with Crystal Reports, so you will have access to the same data that was used in this book. You'll need to install Crystal Reports to get the most out of the examples included in each chapter in the first half of the book.

Conventions Used in This Book

Several conventions are used within this book to help you get more out of the text. Look for special fonts or text styles and icons that emphasize special information.

• Formula examples appear in computer type, and they can be found on the Sams Publishing website as well.

• Objects such as fields or formulas normally appear on separate lines from the rest of the text. However, there are special situations in which some formulas or fields appear directly in the paragraph for explanation purposes. These types of objects appear in a special font like this: Some Special Code.

• In some cases, we might refer to your computer as machine or server. This is always in reference to the physical computer on which you have installed Crystal Reports.

• You'll always be able to recognize menu selections and command sequences because they're implemented like this:

  Use the File, Open command.

• New terms appear in italics when they are defined.

• Text that you are asked to type in appears in boldface.

• URLs for websites are presented like this: http://www.businessobjects.com.

Note

Notes help you understand principles or provide amplifying information. In many cases, a note emphasizes some piece of critical information that you need. All of us like to know special bits of information that make our job easier, more fun, or faster to perform.

Tip

Tips help you get the job done faster and more safely. In many cases, the information found in a tip is drawn from experience rather than through experimentation or documentation.

Real World sections provide some practical and productivity enhancing usage insights derived from the author's real-world experience designing and deploying hundreds of Crystal Reports.

Troubleshooting sections provide some quick chapter summary notes and examples that are useful reminders on the product operations.