Visual Basic Crystal Reports And Designer
Microsoft has included the popular Crystal Reports third party package with Visual Basic. This combination allows you to create reports for your applications. The package consists of a designer, which lets you design and test the reports that you develop, responding to Crystal Reports API calls, and allows Crystal Reports controls. This provides you with the opportunity of using Visual Basic Crystal Reports in your business enterprise applications. Crystal Reports is not a part of Visual Basic or Visual Studio set up, but you can install from the CDs available for Visual Basic and Visual Studio. Microsoft has included Microsoft Data Report designer, starting with Visual Basic version 6.0. It is possible for you to either use the new report designer, or the Crystal Reports. More information about the new designer is available in MSN library.
Since the introduction of Visual Basic version 1.0, developers had quite a long and close relationship with Crystal Reports. Presently, with the introduction of .NET platform and Visual Studio .NET, Crystal Reports has once again made its appearance on the scene. This has set the standard of a third party software being integrated to Microsoft tools, thus creating a package providing you with the features of Visual Basic Crystal Reports for generating complex reporting documents.
In Visual Basic Crystal Reports package, the Crystal Reports writer comes as an add-in program with Visual Basic, in which Crystal Report is used to create custom reports, lists, labels and form letters using data from an existing database. With Crystal Reports supporting a wide range of database, the user has the flexibility to connect to almost all known database software. However, Crstal Report within Visual Basic is usually used to create reports. The Crystal Report writer can be used with the following software application programs:
Microsoft Access
dBase
Paradox
FoxPro
Clipper
Btrieve
SQL Server (via ODBC)
Oracle
MYSQL
Etc. Visual Basic Crystal Reports unites two products from Microsoft and Business Objects, and this union gave the users of Crystal Reports the opportunity to standardize their management in reporting, analysing, and reporting on data. By combining these two products, the users have the ability to provide more complex reporting applications in the enterprise solutions. Visual Basic Crystal Reports have been acknowledged as one of the best-of-breed solutions. The package now presents features, which support creation of reports, consisting of graphs and charts that could be drilled down for further analysis. Visual Basic Crystal Reports allows the developers to use the Crystal Reports designer, by which, one could create a letter template. While pulling the customer data from the database, the letter could be filled with essential details, printed, and then mailed to the respective customers. An additional example is of the use of formatting a report as an invoice. Such invoices for particular customer, or a set of customers, along with specific date ranges, could be prepared and exported as .pdf files. This can be achieved with minimal effort and minimum coding. There are several training courses offered online, and in classroom lectures. Visual Basic Crystal Reports training certification is available when you take up advanced Crystal Report certification course. If you are an organisation, you could schedule in-house training programs at your convenience for your employees. The lectures are all led by qualified VB or Crystal Reports instructors, duly certified by either Microsoft or Business Objects. In such a typical training session of Visual Basic Crystal Reports, you will learn: The minimum components and references required in your project.
The objects and minimum code needed to launch an existing report.
How to connect to the server in your application before launching SQL based reports.
How to Export to the most common formats
How to pass Active Data from the application to the report.
How to control Sub-report features within your reports
How to override and control the following settings in your report, using VB commands:
Selection Formula
Groups
Sorts
Formula Fields
Parameter prompts Visual Basic Crystal Reports training programs have been specially designed for imparting the advanced knowledge in the use of Crystal Reports within Visual Basic, and such training programs are conducted by highly experienced training personnel.
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