Training description
Hands-On Crystal Reports® LT0126E 
Target audience
- Anyone involved in creating reports from stored data. Experience using Windows and working with a spreadsheet is assumed.
Course objective
- With the power of this industry-leading report-writing tool, Crystal Reports users and developers can integrate their organisation's data, making sophisticated reports readily available to support critical business decisions. In this hands-on course, you gain extensive experience using Crystal Reports to connect to databases, retrieve raw data, format data, and create and present reports for widespread distribution. You return to your organisation with a detailed process to help you connect to data sources and create useful reports right away.
- You Will Learn How To
- Develop reports using Crystal Reports to transform data into meaningful information
- Create advanced graphical and crosstab reports
- Add calculations and program logic with the Formula Workshop
- Connect to data sources natively, via ODBC and OLE DB
- Analyse database structures and extract the data you need to meet your reporting needs
- Deploy reports via HTML to a Web browser or desktop application via Visual Basic and .NET
Requirements
Course content
- Overview of Crystal Reports
- Formatting and summarising data
- Filtering, sorting and grouping data
- Customising reports with business logic
- Connecting to SQL Server, Oracle and Access databases
- Adding charts and sub reports to a report
- The Crystal Report Writer
- Writing a basic report
- Selecting a format
- Adding text and fields
- Connecting to remote data sources
- Configuring the reporting environment
- Formatting and styling
- Tailoring sections within a report
- Annotating header and footer fields
- Designing fields for quality presentations
- Adding colour, borders and pictures
- Highlighting data with Highlight Expert
- Linking Crystal Reports to Data
- Connecting to popular data sources
- SQL Server
- Oracle
- Access
- Web logs
- XML
- Reporting from stored procedures and views
- Establishing data connections
- Creating a connectivity checklist
- Configuring ODBC and OLE DB
- Integrating SQL commands in a report
- Interpreting Structures and Retrieving Data
- Navigating complex data
- Deciphering data structures
- Identifying data relationships
- Gathering the right data
- Merging data from multiple tables
- Building business queries
- Optimising data retrieval
- Combining Powerful Report Techniques
- Organising and summarising reports
- Sorting user sort control and grouping
- Grouping with formulas
- Summary and Rolling Total fields
- Using Report Alerts
- Building advanced reports
- Embedding linked and unlinked subreports into reports
- Creating crosstab and drill-down reports
- Designing dynamic and cascading prompts
- Multipass reporting, Hyperlinking Reports and Multilingual Reports
- Achieving reusability with templates
- Visualising complex data
- Simplifying data with charts and graphs
- Organising fields into sections
- Adding, merging, suppressing sections
- Programming Data Functionality
- Coding in formula language
- Working with variables and operators
- Deciphering formula syntax
- Adding and modifying formulas with the Formula Workshop
- Calling and working with functions
- Sharing formulas with the Repository
- Writing effective formulas
- Building if/then/else statements
- Converting and comparing data
- Debugging the code
- Employing the Formula Workshop
- Converting to Basic Syntax
- Writing formulas with Basic Syntax
- Laying a foundation for complex reporting logic
- Deploying Reports to the Internet, Intranets, Visual Basic and .NET
- Deploying Crystal Reports
- Deciding among Push, Pull, Static and Dynamic reports
- Migrating to production by switching databases
- Determining when to use the Crystal Reports Server
- Publishing reports to a Web site
- Exporting reports to HTML
- Publishing to CrystalReports.com
- Integrating into custom applications
- Adding Crystal Reports to Visual Basic and .NET
- Exploring application development options with Crystal Reports
Notes
- You gain hands-on experience using Crystal Reports. Exercises include:
- Building reports from the ground up
- Connecting to data sources natively, via OLE DB and ODBC
- Designing a crosstab and drill-down report
- Developing a summary report with drill-down capabilities
- Simplifying information using charts and graphs
- Adding business logic to your report with the formula language
- Deploying your report to a Web server for Internet/intranet distribution
- Integrating reports with Visual Basic
Duration
4 Days
