[dba-VB] [AccessD] Dot Net, where to start?

Gustav,

We use (shudder) Crystal Reports.

Crystal is bug-ridden, or perhaps I should say bug-riddled, and although they 
fix seemingly thousands of bugs between versions (at least according to their 
lists of changes), they never seem to bother to fix many basic problems. There 
are many bugs in Crystal that have been around so long (years) that long-time 
Crystal developers tend to think of them as "quirky features" rather than the 
maddening bugs they actually are.

That said, overall Crystal does a good job and, in truth, is far more powerful 
than Access as a reporting tool. And despite it's obscene cost, it's cheaper 
than most other solutions. 

I haven't looked at the reporting tool in 2005 yet, but the version I looked 
at a couple of years ago was not at all intuitive, not nearly as powerful as 
Crystal, and had many problems of it's own.

Ron



> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 10:10 AM
> To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
> Subject: [AccessD] Dot Net, where to start?
> 
> Hi all
> 
> It seems to be the time for me to get into the Dot Net stuff. But where to
> start?
> The only books on Access I've ever had are the original references and
> handbooks for Access 1 and 2 and the Application Development book for Access
> 97 so I'm reluctant to buy books - I just don't have the patience ...
> 
> In the Action Pack - which we subscribe to - I've noticed two discs for VS
> 2005 Express, "Corbis Image Disc" and "Getting Started". Are these tutorials
> worth the effort to study?
> 
> I browsed our vb list archive, which I don't subsribe to, and traffic seems
> to be low, so where to discuss Dot Net matters at the same level as we
> discuss Access here?
> 
> One thing I think I've understood is that report design in VS is poor and
> third party tools or Report Design Service of SQL Server 2005 are to be
> preferred if you need reports on a level that match that of Access.
> 
> Of course, my main interest is anything related to databases - pure web
> development is second, and game development won't come into play.
> Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
> 
> /gustav