Crystal Reports 2008 Official Guide

About the Lead Author Neil FitzGerald is an entrepreneur who has successfully started or contributed to multiple consulting companies in the IT consulting domain. Neil combined his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada and his MBA from the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario with his more than 8 years of experience at Business Objects in a variety of senior roles to help provide information solutions to Fortune 500 companies across North America. He has spent more than 13 years in the information delivery domain and is available for onsite or remote consulting to companies large and small. Neil can be contacted at neil_fitzgerald@hotmail.com.   About the Contributing Authors Bob Coates has worked for Business Objects, an SAP company (through the Crystal Decisions and Business Objects acquisitions), for more than 11 years. While there he worked in technical support, global services, and sales consulting. Presently Bob is a principal sales consultant working on the SAP Synergy Team–a branch of the Strategic Technology Group focused on the top 100 SAP customers. Bob would like to thank his wife Amanda for her infinite patience and support.   Ryan Goodman is the founder of Centigon Solutions Inc. As a previous technical evangelist and sales consultant at Infommersion and then Business Objects, Ryan has implemented hundreds of Xcelsius projects spanning more than 4 years. His interactive data visualization and design background coupled with his business insight and technical aptitude have made him one of the top Xcelsius experts in the world. Ryan continues to push the envelope and evangelize Xcelsius on his blog: www.ryangoodman.net/blog.   Michael Voloshko is a principal solutions architect for the financial services vertical at Business Objects, an SAP company.

Introduction

Introduction to Information Delivery

Spectrum of Business Objects Product Usage

Custom Information Delivery Applications

Enterprise BI Initiatives

Spectrum of BI Tool Users

Content Creators (Information Designers)

Information Analysts

Information Consumers

The Product Family from Business Objects

What Is in This Book

Part I: Crystal Reports Design

Part II: Formatting Crystal Reports

Part III: Advanced Crystal Reports Design

Part IV: Report Distribution and Advanced Report Design with Crystal Xcelsius

Equipment Used for This Book

Web Resources

Intended Audience

Requirements for This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

I Crystal Report Design

1 Creating and Designing Basic Reports

Introducing the Crystal Reports Designer


Crystal Report Sections

Using Toolbars and Menus

Report Design Explorers

Locating and Using the Report Design Explorers

The Workbench and Dependency Checker

Understanding Data and Data Sources

Understanding Direct Access Drivers

Understanding Indirect Access Drivers

Introducing the Database Expert

Creating a New Connection

Using My Connections

Adding Database Objects to Your Report

Reporting on Tables

Reporting on Views

Reporting on Stored Procedures

Reporting on SQL Commands

Joining Database Objects

Understanding the Different Join Types

Using the Report Creation Wizards

Getting Started with the Report Wizards

Using the Standard Report Creation Wizard

Creating a Report Without Wizards

Troubleshooting

Crystal Reports in the Real World–HTML Preview

Crystal Reports in the Real World–SQL Commands

2 Selecting and Grouping Data

Introduction

Understanding Field Objects

Accessing Database Fields

Accessing Formula Fields

Access