Re: Know any UserFriendly Query/Report Tool ?

On Fri, 24 Jul 1998 11:28:58 -0300, "N. Daniel Bonesana" <dbones@itron.com.ar> wrote: >I need information + some comments about EndUserOrientedTools that would >allow, in a user friendly manner, to build querys and then reports on >the data retrieve by the querys. >As you might have guessed some important user want to write his own >querys. >Does any of you have good experience with such a product ? First, if you have a standard OLTP type database with it's pletora of normalized tables there is no way you can make it real easy for your users to create advanced reports. For that purpose you need to create a star schema (or possibly snow flake schema in some cases) database and use appropriate tools like Informix MetaCube. However, making simple reports are of course possible for users even directly against your OLTP database. For simple purposes we have found MS Acces quite good. If your users need to be able to create a little more advanced reports we have found Impromptu from Cognos to be much better. It does howeve require quite a bit of setup work by someone who knows the database well before end users can use it effectively. (You essentially define all possible joins between tables that your users will want to use pluss some other meta data.) A third alternative that is sometimes very usefull is to use a tool like PowerPlay from Cognos to create a multi dimensional "database" that is very effective for some types of analysis. PowerPlay has it's sharp limits however, and when you hit these you will have to upgrade to the quite expensive true multidimensional databases from the likes of Arborsoft. These and MetaCube give you some of the same functionalities, but with some differences in what they can do effectively. Nils Myklebust NM Data AS Norway E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".)