Sams Teach Yourself .Net in 21 Days

By Jason Beres

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Technical Editor
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You
  • Introduction
  • Week 1: At a Glance
  • Day 1. Introduction to the Microsoft .NET Framework
  • Day 2. Introduction to Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 3. Writing Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 4. Deploying Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 5. Writing ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 6. Deploying ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 7. Exceptions, Debugging, and Tracing
  • Week 1. In Review
  • Week 2: At a Glance
  • Day 8. Core Language Concepts in Visual Basic .NET and C#
  • Day 9. Using Namespaces in .NET
  • Day 10. Accessing Data with ADO.NET
  • Day 11. Understanding Visual Database Tools
  • Day 12. Accessing XML in .NET
  • Day 13. XML Web Services in .NET
  • Day 14. Components and .NET
  • Week 2. In Review
  • Week 3: At a Glance
  • Day 15. Writing International Applications
  • Day 16. Using Macros in Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 17. Automating Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 18. Using Crystal Reports
    • Why Use Crystal Reports?
    • Creating a Windows Forms Report
    • Using the Windows Forms Report Viewer
    • How to Programmatically Load a Report
    • Printing a Report Without the Viewer Control
    • Exporting a Report Programmatically
    • Viewing Reports in Web Forms
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Quiz
    • Exercises
  • Day 19. Understanding Microsoft Application Center Test
  • Day 20. Using Visual SourceSafe
  • Day 21. Object Role Modeling with Visio
  • Week 3. In Review

Q&A

1. There are a lot of cool features in Crystal, but no time seems to have been spent on the help file. Where do I find out more information on creating reports?

   The help file that comes with .NET isn't great, but it's pretty good. To get a ton of great help on using Crystal with .NET, go to this link:

   http://support.crystaldecisions.com/updates/default.asp

   Search for samples in the .NET version of Crystal Reports. There are 75 to 100 different samples in Visual Basic .NET, C#, and C++ .NET on all aspects of using Crystal in Visual Studio .NET. It's a very helpful Web site.

2. Crystal is cool, but are there any other reporting tools that integrate with .NET?

   Yes, as a matter of fact, I use ActiveReports from Data Dynamics. It has lots of great features; most notably, the fact that the report object itself has a code-behind class in which you can write code to manipulate report data. In my opinion, ActiveReports gives you more granular control over what the data looks like in a programmatic way, not a wizard-driven way.

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