April 29, 2010 at 2:57 am
Hi,
I'm currently a DBA at a very small company and have just assumed the Reporting responsibilities due to someone leaving.
The previous guy used to just churn out report after report every day, some very similar to the others. I wanted to change the way things are done and get the 'business' to build/generate their own reports. As a lot of them appear to take a series of reports, VLOOKUP the primary key in excel and build their own one to go to the customer. Which seems madness!!
We have large DB2 and Oracle systems which I would need to extract the data from and model in our sql server systems.
We currently have over 1000 SSRS reports.
We've used the Report Builder product before, with some success.
My questions are:
1. How does everyone else deliver reports?
2. Do you allow end users to build reports and if so how do they do it?
3. Would building a cube benefit me?
4. If I had a cube do you always have to report in a matrix style, as I'm not sure our users?
Many thanks for any help you can offer.
Paul
April 29, 2010 at 3:34 am
I've seen this done in a number of ways but firstly you need to do some analysis of the reports required.
I always ask questions.
Is the same report run for each time period weekly/monthly these type of reports could be automated via reporting services.
Add hoc reports of same data you could provide a cube and excel and train up power users to generate their own pivot tables.
Even if you haven't got a cube you could use reporting services to schedule excel files to be created for users to manage.
Have you got the hardware available with the capacity to create a cube, do you need to model and populate a Data Mart/Warehouse. Is there the time.
My questions are:
1. How does everyone else deliver reports? - It depends on requirements
2. Do you allow end users to build reports and if so how do they do it? - on occasion but again it depends.
3. Would building a cube benefit me? - Very possibly but again it depends on competency of users and requirements.
4. If I had a cube do you always have to report in a matrix style, as I'm not sure our users? - No you can report how you want, users will need some training here.
Basically until you have a full breakdown of requirements its difficult to work out the best solution.
May 5, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Thanks Carolyn, very useful information.
May 6, 2010 at 5:14 am
To give the end users flexibility in their reporting we make extensive use of SSAS / Cubes / Excel Pivot tables. This allows the users to select their needed items for reporting .
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