Crystal Reports Show n Tell
|
Only a geek would understand. Earlier this week, Jeff McWherter came from Michigan to speak about ASP.NET Performance and Optimizaton at the Vermont.NET User group. He and his wife came a day early to enjoy a little bit of our Vermont winter (even though we had sadly lost most of our snow just before they arrived.) Jeff does a lot of work with Crystal Reports for the consulting company he works for and has been using Crystal for many years. He has a similar "can't live with it, can't live without it" codependency relationship with Crystal as I do. So we got to talking about Crystal and the next thing you know, I was running down to my office to bring him a printout of a very complex report I wrote last year that I am still very proud of. But there are few people in the world who would understand this. After showing him the report, he pulled up a report on his computer that blew mine away. It was an insane 32 page report that had charts and tables, portrait page and landscape pages and more and more. Not only was the report impressive, but the fact that it had been put together by someone on his team who hadn't used Crystal before and in an impressive amount of time, that Jeff was deservedly, bragging about. It struck me as very funny that we were both so excited to show off our reports to each other. Clients only know if it's right or wrong. They generally have no clue the challenges that they present us, nor the geeky pride we have for accomplishing the task. |
Comments (2)
I love you guys. Can I join the "I Love to Hate Crystal club" too? I too have been creating Crystal Reports since the early 90s. :)
BTW, I also love reading your blog. Keep up the good work. However, I do request you stop talking about the snow, I grew up in Co. but now live in Tx. and you know no matter how much I want it to, we'll be lucky to see an inch or two here. :)
Posted by Brett Stinson | January 18, 2008 10:32 AM
Hi:
Is creating complex reports a thrill that you get - or do yo use it to satisfy a business need ?
More often than not, a business user needs to create a complex report on the fly - for ex: Show all my deals > $50K in New York closing this month, accounts rated as *****, probability of closing > 90%, for Product type = XYZ and for which an Appointment/task of expected result = deal signoff has been scheduled for this month ?
Now - this is what the new Web2.0 analytics tools are delivering. Graphs, charts etc can all be generated in XL - but the important aspect is getting the data from information silos.
The key issue is "Business users acceptance" - show me how many end users actually user Crystal reports on the fly ?
Posted by Go Leez | January 28, 2008 4:36 PM