reports in .net

I

inter

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Joined
Jul 22, 2005
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Dear,

Someone I know has an access application. this app generates reports.
He asked me to reprogramme it to .net. I will probably use a mysql database , but I still need to create reports.
what is the cheapest/best way to do this in a vb.net desktop application?

thx,
 
possibilities, creating reports with vb 2005

Ok.. I have seen in vs studio 2005 that I can make reports without having anything special installed.
I created a dataset by connecting to mysql. and dragged and dropped a field from the dataset on to the report. with the report viewer it even gives a nice green whirl before it creates the report :-p

My question. Does anyone know a tutorial for using these reports?
and maybe an important question aswell. Is it possible to create the reports dynamicly, just by code?

thx,
 
Crystal Reports for .Net Programming

To answer your first question, if you have the entire Visual Studio suite, and not just a stand-alone language (i.e. VB.Net standard, etc.), both 2003 and 2005 do come with Crystal Reports for .Net built-in. The only thing you need to do before you deploy your app is to register your copy of CR.Net, which is totally free.

To answer your second question, I strongly recommend purchasing Brian Bischofs book "Crystal Reports for .Net Programming". For approx. $30, you will not find a better book than that to help you understand CR. I bought it when I first got into CR, and some of the pages have actually fallen out of the book as much as Ive used it. You can visit the website at www.crystalreportsbook.com, and click on the "Purchase" link at the top to find resellers.

The first half of the book he describes creating a report graphically using the IDE. The second half he explains how to create them programmatically, giving code examples for VB.Net, C#, and ASP.Net languages. I never quite dove into it far enough to create a report entirely in code, but I did create the report layout in the IDE, and then did everything else in code (i.e. instantiate, load, login to DB, print, etc.).

My advice...buy the book. It will save you so much time and headache trying to figure things out for yourself. He even describes step-by-step the entire process to package up and deploy your report. That section alone is worth its weight in gold, as there are definitely a number of steps that need to be taken for everything to work (i.e. merge modules, license key, etc.).

Chris
 
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