Pro VS 2005 Reporting Using SQL Server and Crystal Reports

I am a VB developer who doesn't do very large-scale applications, but I have found the real-world solutions that are in this book to be a great help. It has a rare blend of coding, architecture, SQL, and reporting examples that is hard to find in books these days. I have applied many techniques discussed in this book in my day to day activities. Kevin has also made himself very available on different internet forums to help discuss topics discussed in the book. Kevin is an author that I trust to provide great, helpful information and I look forward to future publications.

A great help because I originally bought the book for Crystal Report help. Now, my office is switching to Reporting Services and it's been a great guide.

Programmers debate endlessly certain topics object oriented design, service oriented architecture, Java vs. .NET, C# vs. VB .NET, IE 7, etc...But a topic that never comes up that should is reporting. As Kevin points out there is more to writing a report than just the time in the designer. So this book fills a very important niche to help make programmers developers and not just code monkeys. The book starts with some nice pointers to gather the requirements for a report and then it transitions into a pleasant introduction into T-SQL for gathering the data for the reports. Then a large portion of the book goes into some of the infrastructure options going into generating reports, typed data sets vs. un-typed data sets, web services, and remoting. The chapters on Crystal reports are very thorough and leave the reader with a very solid foundation. There is even a chapter that goes into SQL Reporting Services. The book ends with chapters on how to integrate the reporting tool into an application and how to deploy it to clients. There is even a framework with some very nice productivity classes for .NET and Crystal Reports that can be downloaded as part of the code for the book. If you develop reports or are just getting into developing reports (lots of programmers have to at some point) this is an excellent book to pick up.

Kevin and Ron have hit it out of the park with this book. Anyone looking for a step by step guide to building an application using the latest technology from Microsoft will do well to own this book. The clear explanations of the different topics covered make this a joy to read. I am looking forward to more by this dynamic duo. Thanks APress for another great book.