Datasheet

You can also find more information (and post a question if need be) on Microsoft’s public newsgroups.
The majority of Crystal-related questions, regardless of version or language, get posted to microsoft.
public.vb.crystal, but there are always a few questions posted in the general dotnet newsgroup
microsoft.public.dotnet.general.
You will need a newsgroup reader, such as Outlook Express, to access these newsgroups. You can also
visit Microsoft’s HTML version of the newsgroups on their Web site.
Finally, Crystal Decisions maintains its own Web-based forums at
http://community.
businessobjects.com
, where you can post questions and get some answers. Crystal Decisions does
not monitor these forums, but generally the advice is good, and you can always find someone who is
willing to help. While you are on the site, make sure you register your copy of Crystal Reports .NET for
free access to technical support and updates (and the requisite marketing e-mail or two).
Summary
Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET 2003 builds on the reporting technology found in Visual Studio
.NET 2003 and is a powerful addition to the .NET toolset, designed to take advantage of the new .NET
development framework. Using the Crystal Reports Designer, you can quickly create or modify reports
without having to leave the Visual Studio IDE. When it is time to integrate your report into either a
Windows or Web application, Crystal Reports includes a number of viewers that you can quickly inte-
grate into your application. With a scalable back-end processing architecture, Crystal Reports for Visual
Studio .NET should be the only tool you need to integrate reporting into your enterprise applications.
In the next chapter, we’ll move beyond the product overview to actually start creating reports and inte-
grating them into our own development.
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