May 8, 2011 at 11:54 am
Hi. - My company is using a 3rd party, proprietary data system which has limited canned reports. There are many mgt. and administrative types who, understandably, wish to create their own ad hoc reports, on the fly. They are not techies, but some know MS Access basics.
The question is should they be attempting to learn SQL or Crystal Reports for their purpose? They are willing to be trained in either, although they would be probably seeking a short term course. (Spread over days as opposed to daily for weeks or daily for months)
And is this even practical considering the stated time commitments?
And, finally, knowing that the data dictionary is quite large for the data system, would either reporting prg. be simple enough to be mastered easily by non-techie staff?
Russ
May 8, 2011 at 6:59 pm
My recommendation is to NOT let the users anywhere near the production server with their own queries even after training. I recommend, instead, that you make a copy of the production data on a reporting server and then let the users go to town with their reports.
3rd party training won't help them the way that most people would think. For example, 3rd party training won't show them how to use a Tally Table to build dynamic Cross-Tabs against an unknown number of date columns. 3rd party training also won't show them how to pre-aggregate data for blinding speed and very low resource usage. It's also not likely that 3rd party training will show them how to avoid non-SARGable predicates or how to use 'Divide'n'Conquer' methods to avoid server crushing many-to-many "accidental cross joins".
My recommendation is that someone sit shoulder to shoulder with a couple of the users and show them how to create a report from their own requirements and the proper techniques. Then they can train the other users.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
May 9, 2011 at 12:17 am
There's three components here:
- The way the data is stored in the database (are the tables and fields meaningfully named, and are there proper foreign keys to aid in building queries).
- The reporting software you use (SSRS or Crystal, neither is particularly hard to learn the basics of, though both are frustrating when you need to get just a little complicated).
- The skills of the users in putting the two together.
If the data is heavily de-normalised, you'll likely need views or stored procedures created by a DBA to get things into something more easily digested by the users. They'll also need to set SSRS up.
As for SSRS or Crystal... apart from what I noted above, SSRS 2008 R2 (if you have it available) will give you Report Parts which someone knowledgeable can set up (or even users themselves) and share between each other. But I'm a little dubious about the actual utility of it. Even with PowerPivot and other neat "toys" coming out...
The last one is the big one. I've been impressed (and terrified) by what accountants can cook up in Excel, and the SSRS query builder is pretty good if you have a well structured database... but it's difficult to really dig down without a good knowledge of T-SQL, which IMO is quite hard to train. It depends a building a list of all the reports you initially want, and what data you want to get out, and how accessible it it.
I think your best bet would be to get an external consultant (in business intelligence if you want a big bill, or you could make do with someone who has good SSRS or Crystal knowledge and a bit of DBA) and pay them to take a look and make a suggestion... then they can also do the ground work in setting things up and training your users... or otherwise hire them to be your dedicated report builder.
The other thing to think about is, can your business really sustain however many users spending hours a day spending valuable time from their "real job" instead trying to work out some trivial SSRS issue like working out how to tally on a group with a filter (seeing as SSRS won't do it properly itself, and is one of the basic things you're going to need in most of your reports), when a dedicated (or contract) employee can have that knowledge already and whip it out in a fraction of the time, time after time?
I think one of the big problems you'll come up against is a nebulous and vague idea of what reports are needed and how it should all work; which isn't enough. It will take a lot of time and effort to tease out some actual requirements, and like any kind of business venture, unless you want to throw money away you'll need to investigate and plan properly first.
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