>I see a lot of jobs advertized for people knowing Crystal Reports. I
tried to use this platform 6 years ago and found it awkward and
difficult. I find Access, using ODBC, to grab data and build reports to
be an easier solution for me anyway.
My introduction to Crystal Reports was similar. I first tried it using
the version that shipped with Visual Studio 97 (it was CR v4.x, IIRC)
and I thought it was rather clunky.
However, Crystal Reports has matured a great deal since then. I still
prefer building reports in Access, mainly because I have been using it
for so many years, but I use CR (now at version 11) from time to time
as well.
So what is all the fuss about Crystal Reports? Why use it, why learn
it, why not tell an employer you have another way of getting him his
reports than CR?
If by "why not tell an employer" you mean "why not tell [a prospective]
employer" then your job-hunting strategy is... unusual. If you mean
"why not tell [your current] employer" then be sure you know the whole
story. They may have specific reasons why they use CR.
CR is not only a stand-alone product, it is also a component in a
larger Enterprise-level suite of applications to manage reporting
functions within the organization. It allows reports to be created,
scheduled, retrieved, delivered via the internal network, deployed over
the web, and so on. I'm no expert on it, but
www.businessobjects.com
can tell you all about it.
There are also some features in CR that Access reports - as good as
they are - can't do (AFAIK). A couple of examples are:
- dynamic "drill-down" of groupings (multi-level show/hide group
details)
- on-demand subreports (not processed until you drill-down into them)
In other words, a Crystal Report does not have to be just a static
document - it can have some interactivity built into it and be
printer-ready at the same time.
