Crystal Reports 10 For Dummies
Chapter One
Transforming Raw Data
into Usable Information
In This Chapter
* Outlining the major features of Crystal Reports 10
* Discussing the four editions
* Viewing an existing report
Computers can store and process enormous amounts of data, and with
the relentless advance of technology, those capabilities will soon become
even more mind-boggling. Even now, the major challenge of getting value from
computer systems is not to make them more powerful but to harness the
power they already have - in a way that delivers useful information to people.
Megabytes or gigabytes of raw data are neither meaningful nor useful to
people. Instead, we need organized information, distilled and focused on
answering specific questions. In businesses and enterprises of all kinds, organizing
and presenting information has traditionally been the job of documents
called reports. These documents generally consist of multiple pages that can
include text, numbers, charts, maps, and illustrations. The best reports convey
the facts needed to make the best decisions, unobscured by a clutter of data
irrelevant to the task at hand.
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