Wiley Crystal Reports 2008 For Dummies 978-0-470-29077-4 Manuale Utente

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978-0-470-29077-4
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Chapter 1
Transforming Raw Data into
Meaningful Information
In This Chapter

Outlining the major features of Crystal Reports 2008

Viewing an existing report
C
omputers can store and process enormous amounts of data, and with the
relentless advance of technology, those capabilities will soon become
even more mind-boggling. Even now, the major challenge of getting value from
computer systems isn’t to make them more powerful but rather to harness the
power they already have and in a way that delivers useful information to
people.
Megabytes or gigabytes of raw data are neither meaningful nor useful to people.
Instead, you need organized information, distilled and focused on answering
specific questions. In businesses and enterprises of all kinds, organizing and
presenting information has traditionally been the job of documents called
reports. These documents generally comprise multiple pages that can include
text, numbers, charts, maps, and illustrations. The best reports convey the
facts needed to make the best decisions, unobscured by a clutter of data
irrelevant to the task at hand.
Crystal Reports, a leading report-writing application package for more than a
decade, is by far the most commonly used report writer in the world. Many
people have used Crystal Reports unknowingly for years because it’s often
integrated with other applications and not specifically identified by name.
Major Features of Crystal Reports 2008
Crystal Reports 2008 includes all the features that made Crystal Reports XI
(its predecessor) a worldwide bestseller, plus it offers exciting new features
that save you time and effort while you develop your reports. Crystal Reports
2008 is tightly integrated so that all the individual components of the system
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