Need advice for training and versions

[woodrg]

My supervisor has asked me to find some training for Crystal Reports for myself and one other designer/developer. In addition, I’ve been tasked to find some guidance towards what version we should seek to acquire. I’ve been reading thru the posts on training and versions trying to find some advice and I thought I’d just go ahead and ask straight out.

We have one copy of 8.5 and have been sent an upgrade to 9; but because of what i've read here, i'm curious as to which version we should train for. I’ve read that versions 9 and 10 have enough of a difference in the interface that it could be confusing to try to come back to work at 8.5 (though trainers may tell you otherwise). I’ve also read that there are enough bugs in 9 and 10 and to hold off on upgrading from 8.5 until some of the kinks are worked out; that in fact some groups that have upgraded have back up to their previous 8.5 versions. So is 8.5 going to be best for us, or would we not really notice the problems in subsequent versions since we are not already familiar with the product? We are in a good position to purchase which ever version would be best for us at this point, i just need to know what that is.

We do currently have Business Objects 5.1 but do not use it fully as it is truly intended. A few of us have gotten beyond the basics with it, but it is widely used as a glorified query tool for many of our end users. Our development group is moving towards web-based reporting, and our directive is to look towards using Crystal for our reporting tool. Ideally I am looking forward to the version that will combine the two products as I am familiar with Business Objects and Crystal doesn’t seem too user friendly.

So where do we go from here?

I’m also seeking advice in training venues. Have any of you had experience with Learning Tree? Or would you suggest going with the Business Objects group themselves? I have some ideas of both, but none are based of experience. I realize the preferred method in this forum is on site or online training but neither are feasible for our situation. Our requirement is for only 2 individuals and my department’s workload is such that the only way we will be able to actually fully participate and learn in the training would be to ship us off!

I am located in South Alabama, and we currently run Oracle 8i but have direction to upgrade to 9i as soon as practical. I'm sorry this is lengthy, I was hoping to make it easy for you guys by giving you all the information up front. Thanks in advance for any guidance!

Becky
Ft. Rucker

 

[RJFost]

Hi, Becky,

I work for a 220-bed hospital in eastern Indiana. I'm the analyst for a number of systems that use most every RDBMS flavor you'd want: SQL Server (7.0 & 2000), Oracle (8i, 9i, 10i), Access (2.0, 97, 2000), dBASE III, vendor-proprietary Sybase, etc.

Over the past 3 years, I've used CR v8.5 to report against all of them. I've played around with v9.0; it doesn't look like one of their scorched-earth upgrades, but there are some significant differences. Crystal Decisions is pretty good about upgrading/retooling their ODBC drivers, so I've not had any connectivity problems that I can remember.

As regards education, the only 3rd-party training I've ever taken (since starting with CR 3.5, back when the Earth was cooling) was with an consulting outfit in Columbus, OH, back in 2001. Overall, it was useful, but not awe-inspiring. I'd say that as long as a firm's certified as a Partner or Training/Education Provider, you should do OK.

As an interim, stop-gap measure, you could do a lot worse than getting your hands on a copy of "Seagate Crystal Reports 8.5- The Complete Reference" from Osborne/McGraw-Hill. It's a thorough, well-written reference manual; I've just about worn my copy to tatters.

 

[woodrg]

Hi RJ

Thanks for the response! Are your reports web-based by any chance? Though we are currently developing applications thru .NET, and i realize that newer versions of crystal are created to work hand in hand with .NET, i don't think it's our intention to actually develop our reports thru .NET. So it's not necessary for us to upgrade for that reason. But we are definetly looking to have our products web based via our intranet, so do you know if 8.5 will accomodate that need?

And though it sounds ignorant (which i am at this!), will we need the Crystal Enterprise Server to do this?

I know i could contact the company themselves, but i know that they are going to sell us what ever we are willing to buy! So i'd like to do my homework before we get to that point. That's the same reason i think i would prefer the 3rd party training that is not from the "horses mouth" itself. I'd like the first block of training to let us know what the product is capable of doing, and point us in the right direction of what we need to learn, and how we need to learn it. I'm concerned that Business Objects themselves would be more apt to push the product, than to be honest about it's strengths and weaknesses. Am i way off base with this?

 

[woodrg]

OK... now that i've been checking out the book you mentioned, i see that the cover alone answers a great deal of my questions! I'll be picking it up this week!

But still, i'd like to know your (or others) opinions about the 3rd party training as opposed to going thru Business Objects themselves.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!

Becky,
Ft. Rucker

 

[RJFost]

I'm still developing on VB 6.0; our department actually only has 2 full-blown programmer/analysts; the others are analysts, too, but more tied to their respective systems. 5-6 years ago (before my time), the Gods of Olympus decreed that we weren't a development shop; they'd gotten in the habit of buying off-the-shelf, bolt-on products. As a result, I can't speak to .Net & CR at all (except in tones of mild-to-moderate envy)...sorry.

For various reasons, we don't do a tremendous amount of web-based reporting. Some systems don't allow access to their role-based security tables, so I can't restrict the report to approved-only data. Others involve data warehouse tables with upwards of 17,000,000 records in some tables...the reports would run until the end of time on the user's machines (or choke the bandwidth on the web server).

Once upon a time, I took a good, long look at Crystal Enterprise & came away with (mostly) favorable opinions. I like that the reports can be run as scheduled events in the wee, small hours of the morning; the web/report server caches the data & uses that for the non-realtime reports the users run. I also like that I don't have to trudge around to ±800 PCs to install patches & the like. The downside, as usual, is the cost- buckets o' ducats. When they gave us a quote 18 months ago (when CR v9.0 was cutting-edge), it ran to over $140K. Ouch.

And if memory serves, Crystal Decisions has a page of partner/trainer/warm & fuzzy links somewhere on their site...might be a good place to start your training research.

Oh, just as an aside between us IT wonks- in a lot of cases, I've found that since users ALWAYS want their reports in Excel (grrr), I can save a lot of time & heartache by yanking the data out via query & dumping it into a spreadsheet. Can't tell you how many hours I've spent putting lots of bells & whistles on a report for the Powers That Be, only to have it come back with a voice-mail "...can I get this in an Excel spreadsheet, by any chance?" Just something to keep in mind.

 

[RJFost]

If your fingers are as tired as mine, give me a call at 765.983.3064 & ask for Ron. We could probably thrash this out in half the time on the phone vs. back-&-forth posts. Give me until 1400 or so (Central); the cafeteria beckons, then it's a department meeting (oh, be still, my heart).

 

[synapsevampire]

A caveat is that most training programs don't teach best practices, rather they train you on how to use Crystal to accomplish everything, especially with regards to 8.5

If the coursework includes the Crystal Query Designer, I'd stay away from it. If they have real world examples, where they use Oracle, and SQL Expressions, and try to avoid subreports, then they might give you something worthwhile.

Otherwise you're going to learn little more than an online training would provide, and have to unlearn quite a bit.

There are lots of trainers out there, one of the local wizards here specializes in it:

http://www.kenhamady.com

As do some others.

-k

 

[donna1]

Is there anybody who is like me a beginner in cr ver 8.5, trying to get started any useful help-advice training in L'pool area?

Thanks
dm