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Crystal Reports
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Crystal Reports Basics: Five steps for the beginner--Getting started

This is based on the book, Crystal Reports: A Beginner’s Guide. For more detail and explanation, plus practice exercises, order the book here.

  1. Define the concept. Determine what information you want in the final report, and how you want it laid out. Sketching on paper or doing a mockup in another program (e.g., Excel) is helpful. If you look at the sample reports included in Crystal Reports, you’ll have a good basis for design.

  2. Source the data. Determine what kind of data are available. You may not have the sales figures, allocated overhead, or some other data on which to base the report you are designing. Think of the data as your raw materials—build what you can, based on what you’ve got to work with. You may also have to determine the calculation abilities of the database, which is the preferred location for calculations.

  3. Create the design. Again, sketching this out ahead of time is the most effective approach. If you can sketch in your head, fine. Most people find a pencil and paper works well—simply arrange blocks or representative text to show what should go where, and be sure to show the source of data for each result. You will also need to look at data grouping, sorting, and calculating. Which fields and records do you need from which tables? Figure all of this out before starting your work with Crystal Reports, and you save time.

  4. Develop and test. It shouldn’t be hard at all to develop a basic report. Put the basic structure in place, and see if the results are what they should be. Try it on the various platforms it must operate on, and see if it works as intended. Then, tweak for the other features you want. Make sure any user prompts are clear in their message.

  5. Deploy and operate. How will people use this report? Will they want to export it? What software are they likely to use in doing so? Test the report based on how people will use it, and then see if your design needs some rework. Do your formulas, naming, and coding conventions make sense to end-users? Can end-users make necessary modifications?

 

 

Keep in mind that report design is an ongoing process. Once you know the basics of Crystal Reports, you’ll want to add functionality offered only by third-party vendors. Take a look here at what some of that functionality is and what some of those offerings are.

 

 

This article is copyrighted by Crystalkeen, Mindconnection, and Chelsea Technologies Ltd. It may be freely copied and distributed as long as the original copyright is displayed and no modifications are made to this material. Extracts are permitted. The names Crystal Reports and Seagate Info are trademarks owned by Business Objects.

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