Introduction

In the first two chapters, you created reports that display the rows of data in your database onto the report surface with minimal manipulation of that data. The value of Crystal Reports is its inherent capacity to convert those rows of raw data into valuable information. Information will reveal something about the data that cannot be found by simply poring over pages and pages of records. In the last chapter, you began to take advantage of the power of Crystal Reports by applying grouping to a report to organize the data into categorical groups. In this chapter, you build on that by learning how to create reports that perform the following actions:

• Filter data based on a given criteria

• Sort data based on field values

• Summarize and subtotal data

For more detailed information on grouping data, p. 65.