Crystal Reports 9 On Oracle

Crystal Reports 9 on Oracle
by Annette Harper ISBN:0072230797
McGraw-Hill © 2003 (390 pages)

This text explores connectivity options, then delves into optimization methods that can be implemented in the Crystal environment, including the use of SQL Expressions and SQL Commands, and much more.

Crystal Reports 9 is a wonderful, full-featured, report-writing tool. If you are using Crystal Reports with Oracle databases, the topics in this book will make you a better report developer. All major RDBMS have many similarities, but an in-depth understanding of your particular database, in this case Oracle, will allow you to take advantage of its unique features. You will create reports that are more efficient and will do so quickly and easily; you will develop reports that run faster, use fewer server and network resources, and are easier to maintain. You will also reduce development time and be able to solve complicated reporting problems using Oracle features.

This book assumes that you have a moderate level of expertise with Crystal Reports 9. It does not cover generic report-writing topics. You should investigate one of the other available Crystal Reports books if you need to learn Crystal Reports.

There is often perceived to be a wide gulf between “report writers” and “database developers.” This distinction is artificial. As a report developer, you are writing queries against the database just as any database developer would. You might even be creating views and stored procedures. A couple of significant differences are that you are probably not modifying data, and you are probably returning more information per query than the typical application query would require. Hence, this book does not cover database modification, but it does cover query optimization. To write truly efficient, powerful reports, you need to have a solid understanding of the database and how it processes your queries. This book will supply you with the Oracle information that you need as a report writer.

In addition to coverage of basic Oracle topics, such as structures, datatypes, and the SQL SELECT statement, you will find chapters dealing with creating stored procedures for use with Crystal Reports, picking the best connection methods, optimization from both within Crystal Reports and on the backend. Many sample queries and reports are given, including subreports that you can add to your own reports that display the database statistics and execution plan for the main report. A database dictionary report is developed that you can use in your own environment to document your database structures, and the Crystal repository is ported to Oracle and given Oracle security features.

In some situations, two plus two is much greater than four. When you add Oracle-specific skills to your Crystal Reports skills, you will advance to the next level of report development.


Table of Contents
Crystal Reports 9 on Oracle
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Connectivity, Authentication, and Privileges
Chapter 2 - Oracle Structures
Chapter 3 - Oracle SQL
Chapter 4 - Oracle Advanced SELECT Options
Chapter 5 - PL/SQL
Chapter 6 - Optimizing: The Crystal Reports Side
Chapter 7 - Optimizing: The Oracle Side
Chapter 8 - Optimizing: Reducing Parses
Chapter 9 - Other Tips
Chapter 10 - Data Dictionary Report
Chapter 11 - The Crystal Repository
Appendix A - Common Issues
Appendix B - Functions
Index
List of Figures
List of Tables

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