Chapter 16: Reporting and Information Delivery

An Introduction to Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET

In the old days, when I was a junior-level mainframe computer operator, I spent many weekends decollating boxes of multipart printed reports and forms. Decol lating was the process by which mainframe programmers used a machine to pull apart the multiple report copies. Using the decollating machine, I would "thread" each paper sheet copy and carbon paper sheet into alternating spindles. When the spindles would turn , the ink-filled black carbon paper would separate from each green-bar paper sheet copy. Several decollating machine jams later, I would end up with several stacks of individually printed report copies (and barrels of carbon paper).

Ink stained from head to toe, with the appearance of a soot-covered coal miner, I would load the delivery van with the printed reports. After driving across town to the corporate office, I would navigate one freight elevator, several narrow hallways, and a few flights of stairs to deliver the reports. With the printed reports in their hands, the considerate business users would often tear off the last page of the report (typically the totals page) and politely demand that I take the remaining boxes of the report (unread) to the shredding dumpster.

Note  

Allow me to point out just how prevalent the use of carbon paper was in the "old days." Today, rather than being stuck with phrases such as "electronic copies" and "digital copies," we instead have the infamous phrase "carbon copies" being used for e-mail copies (i.e., the acronym "cc" when sending multiple "copies" of electronic e- mails ).

Yes, times have certainly changed ^[1] since the old days. High-speed printers and copiers have made carbon paper practically extinct. Electronic delivery of information is now common and expected. Users still have their demands. Except now, users demand the ability to manipulate the "digital softcopy" ”to get their "totals page" and more. To the developer, reporting has taken on a whole new meaning.

In this chapter, I discuss the features that exist in .NET to support modern-day reporting. I explore the use of the Visual Studio .NET (VS .NET) Crystal Reports feature for report creation and display. From there, I discuss several report and information delivery options using Crystal Reports. The support provided by Crystal Reports for various file format exports as well as XML Web service pub lishing should make this chapter an interesting read.

^[1] I have always wanted to personally thank the National Cash Register Corp. (now NCR Corp.) for developing No Carbon Required (NCR) paper. The increasing use of NCR paper eventually brought a welcomed break from the messy and labor- intensive carbon paper “ based "multipart" copies.