For this review we'll look at the book Crystal Reports Encyclopedia Professional XI Reports Volume 1 by Brian Bischof.  Brian has a lot of Crystal Reports credentials.  If you have ever looked at the online book site Crystal Reports for .NET, then you are familiar with Brian Bischof's work. 

Brian has volume 2 of this series called "Programming in .NET 2005".  That book focuses more on the development aspect of Crystal Reports XI, while this book focuses on the development of reports.  This book will be useful for your report writers or power users that can develop reports for you.

The book is over 600 pages.  The layout includes Tips sections and Tutorials interspersed throughout each chapter.  The Table of Contents contains a simple listing of 15 chapters.  There are 2 appendixes including a focused appendix on Financial Reporting. 

The first part of the book includes a listing of the "R2 Feature Guide", which lists where the new features for R2 can be found throughout the book.  I think this is a nifty feature that should help experienced report developers looking for a quick list to help with R2.  When you look up that page, you will see that it is clearly marked with R2 and it is in a shaded area. 

They lay out the Appendixes in a standard manner; along with the index.  There is no Glossary in this book.

Each chapter is well written for anyone who needs to develop reports.  Chapter 7: Writing Formulas describes this topic in depth starting from creating basic formulas, including a great explanation of the basic syntax.  In living up to the name of the encyclopedia terms, this chapter dives into the more complex issues, such as "Evaluation Time Defaults".  That subject can be helpful when you are creating more complex reports.  This gives a great description of when formulas are evaluated when your report runs.

Another useful feature of the book is found in Chapter 9, "Incorporating Subreports".  In this chapter, there are a series of 9 tutorials specifically for subreports.  They range the gamut, including a tutorial on how to hide subreport sections.    

I think the "Maximizing SQL Performance" chapter has some useful pointers about how to get your reports SQL to run on the server.  Suggestions in this chapter range from "how to optimize the query detailing specifics of the where clause", to "details on Stored Procedures". 

The Charting chapter includes good information on using charts in your Crystal report.  I was disappointed that this book didn't go through all the chart options available for each different chart.  Since this book includes the word "encyclopedia" in the title, I would love to be able to go back to the book to see more detail on all these options.

The "Creating Cross-Tab Reports" chapter contains a great explanation of when and why you should use a Cross-Tab report.  "Understanding Cross-Tab Reports" is where you can find that explanation.  Besides listing the reasons why, Brian uncovers the limitation of this type of reports.  Throughout the rest of the chapter, Brian takes you through how to create the cross-tab, including listing properties differences. 

The Cross-Tab Report chapter includes Tutorials.  One that I found most intriguing involves an explanation of "Copying a Cross-Tab into Arrays".  This includes creating a complex formula to take advantage of the arrays that are created in this tutorial. 

The final chapter I'll look over in this review is the final appendix.  "Appendix A: Financial Reporting" is intended to be a reference guide for creating standard financial reports using Crystal Reports.  This appendix includes a Balance Sheet, an Income Statement, and a Multi-Year Income Statement.  By introducing the reader to basic accounting principles, then showing some sample accounting databases, there is a good basis for the reader for the tutorials that follow.  I believe that putting some standard reports like this in is a good idea and can be helpful, assuming it's adopted by others.  Probably having Crystal include these reports as samples on the install would help it.

The book is Crystal Reports Encyclopedia Professional XI Reports Volume 1 by Brian Bischof.  In my review, I found a few areas where I think it doesn't live up to the Encyclopedia designation.  But there are many other areas where it does live up to that.  Another caveat is that this volume is for report designers, not for programming Crystal Reports.  You can see Crystal Reports Encyclopedia Professional XI Reports Volume 2 by Brian Bischof for that information. 

I would recommend this book as a must have for Crystal Reports report designers.  It is a great reference to supplement the materials that come standard with Crystal Reports.