I’m continuing to make my way through this book, although far more slowly then I would like. If you missed the first part of my review you can find it here.
Chapter 6 – This chapter focuses on using graphics such as charts and images in reports. This chapter provided a nice overview of graphics, and like the previous chapter, the directions were easy to follow. I’m not sure if I will use graphics to build reports in my current job, none of the reports we have in production include charts and we have very little use of images.
Chapter 7 – This chapter is called “Kicking it Up a Notch: Intermediate Reporting” and that is a perfect title for it. The chapter starts with showing how to create a template to use in future reports. Much time is spent on improving the presentation of reports and the chapter introduces concepts like totals in reports, grouping, sorting, parameters, and using stored procedures instead of SQL queries. Lots of meat here and it took me a bit of time to build all the reports in this chapter.
And I can’t remember any typos, not a one! The only criticism I have is this: stored procedures should be introduced earlier, maybe even in chapter 5. Embedded SQL in reports (or applications) is not a good thing.
So far, a very good book, well worth my money.
