Brian...
Given that this is a Crystal Reports forum it might seem silly to ask, but what makes CR so much better, if in fact that it is, than any other reporting tool?
This question is not meant to be a slam, but I'm asking out of sheer curiosity. Let me explain why I'm asking this question. Four years ago I began making strides toward putting together a development career. I was tossed into the task of using CR to create the reports for an web application that, at the time, was using classic ASP with VB6.0. Eventually we moved to using the .NET 1.1 Framework, VB.NET, and VS 2003. When I started using CR I had no clue as to what I was doing and I couldn't find any real help with using it either.
To make a long story short, I started with CR 8.5 (stand alone) and eventually moved to CR.NET 2003 when we moved to using the .NET 1.1 Framework and VS 2003. This is when I discovered your book (late 2005 early 2006). I didn't go through the book cover to cover (time contraints) but what I was able to glean from the book was invaluable. Nonetheless, during the entire time I was tasked with using CR to create reports some of the more senior developers contanstly kept advocating the use of some other reporting tool that was less of a pain to figure out, better at developing reports, and most importantly, the ability to deploy to a web server or at all.
Even though I was getting better at using CR my frustrations with implementing the tool into a web application and trying to improve my own programming skills at the same time led me to join there chorus of getting rid of CR in lieu of something better. The opportunity to use another reporting tool never came about because the company eventually loss the contract that the development team was working on, in early '06, and we all moved on to doing other things. I had not touched or used CR since that time.
That being said, I never got rid of the Crystal Reports.NET programming book that I purchased because I figured, what the heck, somebody else might need an answer or two and I can either point them to this book or provide them the answer from the book. After all, I wasn't going to ever need it again.
Well, as fortune would have it almost two years later, after forgetting all that I figured out before, I've been blessed with an opportunity to really get my development career back on track and wouldn't you know part of what needs to be done on this new assignment is to create... you guessed it, Crystal Reports.
This time around though I don't feel as much anxiety about coming up to speed with it because:
1. I used it before
2. I never got rid of my CR "bible" and
3. This forum has grown immensely since then
Even still though, getting back to my original question:
What makes CR so much better, if in fact that it is, than any other reporting tool?
Even further:
Why does it appear to be the defacto choice for most reporting?
How is it that you, Brian, have become the absolute authority on this tool?
Because your books are THE ONLY ones on the market that explans CR as well it does from both the design and programming perspective, PERIOD... END OF STORY. In fact, I don't even think CR's competitors have any authors out there that have championed the cause of any other reporting tool with the kind of resources that you've been providing for CR.
It is for this reason why I don't feel so apprehensive about this new opportunity I'm about to undertake. I have more questions to ask but I think I will put them in a seperate post. I've already written the "Gettysburg Address" in this one.
Thanks in advance for repsonse
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