Integrating Crystal Reports into an ASP.NET Application

Book excerpt: This Wrox Blox provides step-by-step instructions on how to incorporate the Crystal Reports for .NET into an ASP.NET application. Reporting is a key ingredient for polishing up applications, especially enterprise applications or line-of-business applications. You can quickly and easily build an ASP.NET application that allows a manager to run reports to get this information rather than display it in a simple HTML page. In this Wrox Blox, you'll learn how to dynamically format reports, easily group data, display subtotals as well as grand totals, sort data, filter data, and even export the report as a PDF. There are plenty of applications that allow users to enter data into a database, but, for some reason, reports always seem to be forgotten when it comes to designing the application. For many business applications, a report is the only output the person paying for the application is looking for. How fast are the data entry operators entering data? How many support calls are being logged? How many bugs are in the application? Do these types of requests sound familiar? It's usually upper management asking these questions, and the last thing you want them to do is actually go into the application to get this information; that opens up a whole new can of worms. Crystal Reports for .NET truly is a magnificent tool to polish off your application and keep your mangers happy while keeping the users productive. Table of Contents Adding a Crystal Report to an ASP.NET Application 2 Inserting Fields, Text, and Special Fields 7 Sorting, Grouping, and Subtotaling 12 Select Expert 17 Dynamic Formatting 19 Using the Crystal Reports Viewer 21 Summary 25 About the Author