Crystal Reports® 2008 For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Transforming Raw Data into Meaningful Information

In This Chapter

• Outlining the major features of Crystal Reports 2008

• Viewing an existing report

Computers 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 ...