starting crysal report?

[pacificpear]

hi all,
i just started getting training on crystal report and i am wondering if any one can tell me wht is the main resposibilties of a crystal report developer in a bank or a mortgage firm.wht kind of reports are generated in banks and mortgage firm..wht kind of skills are required to be a crystal report developer...

can anyone help..

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
The primary 2 skills ( IMHO) for a good developer are a detailed knowledge of the data and its relationship to business needs and very strong comminication skills to elicit the needed information from end users about what is needed in the report.

As to what types of reports, it cannot be predicted.
( Expect there will be Cross-Tabs and Many summary type ones, but anything else is a guess)

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Being able to spell communication would probably help as well ..

 

[Madawc]

Crystal is great for doing quick little reports that look reasonably neat. Use the Report Expert at first, until you have a clearer idea of what the language does.

The set-up for Formula Fields gives you a set of useful commands, but unfortunately not all of them. Reading this forum will give you a lot of extras.

Having come to Crystal from mainframe languages, I got a 'cultural shock' when encountering null. It means 'no data': Mainframe languages mostly treat this as the same as zero.
It is actually a finer shade of meaning, the difference between 'Yes, we have no bananas' and 'I don't know how many bananas we have, it could be some, it could be zero'. In Crystal, the entry is 0 or null and can be tested for.
Note that Crystal assumes that anything with a null means that the field should not display. Always begin with something like

if isnull({your.amount}) then 0 
		         else {your.amount}

or

if isnull({your.date}) 
or {your.date} in [{Start-Date} to {End-Date}) then "OK"
else "not"

Or else

if isnull({your.amount})  
then "no value found" 
else ToText({your.amount})

The 'ToText' allows you to mix numbers and text, and also has interesting format options.

You'll also discover that Crystal is a reporting tool, which allows you to produce neat-looking reports very quickly. It isn't a full programming language, though it does include a lot of options that you can control in a subtle way.

Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK)

 

[Turkbear]

Hi Madawc,
Your comment -
I got a 'cultural shock' when encountering null. It means 'no data': Mainframe languages mostly treat this as the same as zero., actually understates the possible confusion..In some databases ( especially Oracle) NULL does not mean no data, nor does it mean 0 or blank! - It actually means 'not determinable' so it is not = to anything, or even <> to anything ( this includes itself!)..
In this case, NULL's only operators are IS NOT and IS ..

( It is almost metaphysical)...