Large Chunks of Data

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Large Chunks of Data

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Eric M Russell SSC Guru Points: 125562 More actions · Answer 1

Robert.Sterbal (4/3/2015)
Eric,
Are they just afraid of electronic signatures?

Somewhere in the bowls of every large corporation and government agency, there is at least one gray haired person dedicated to doing this. Maybe executive management doesn't trust their IT departments disaster recovery plan... and to be honest maybe they have a point. Paper is cheap, and in the aftermath of Enron Corporation and various county government financial scandals, there is something to be said for periodically taking non-digital shapshots of financial reports that then get carted away to a remote undisclosed location that can't be accessed without a combination lock.

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

brs0102 SSC Journeyman Points: 77 More actions · Answer 2

One interesting thing, to me, about the biggest reports is that (as many here have noted) they're really exports for analysis.

But in the modern era, those "exports for analysis" are almost always busy work for redundant BA's eating up salaries for no purpose.

Usually when a BA demands a million-row export, they then run off and try to put it into multiple Excel sheets with convoluted LOOKUPs, and then a month or three later they triumphantly impart to management some incredibly trivial piece of information that anyone who can write SQL could have produced in 5 minutes with the existing tables and one LEFT JOIN.

Because business users often have no real idea that databases can do, they tend to demand data extracts that they then fight with their bare hands. This problem doesn't exist in any shop where they won't hire you to do business analysis unless you can at least write basic queries.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004414 More actions · Answer 3

brs0102 (4/3/2015)
One interesting thing, to me, about the biggest reports is that (as many here have noted) they're really exports for analysis.
But in the modern era, those "exports for analysis" are almost always busy work for redundant BA's eating up salaries for no purpose.
Usually when a BA demands a million-row export, they then run off and try to put it into multiple Excel sheets with convoluted LOOKUPs, and then a month or three later they triumphantly impart to management some incredibly trivial piece of information that anyone who can write SQL could have produced in 5 minutes with the existing tables and one LEFT JOIN.
Because business users often have no real idea that databases can do, they tend to demand data extracts that they then fight with their bare hands. This problem doesn't exist in any shop where they won't hire you to do business analysis unless you can at least write basic queries.

Heh... I read this with great joy because that's exactly what happens. It's a large part of the reason I call "Business Intelligence" an oxymoron. 😛

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

akljfhnlaflkj SSC Guru Points: 76202 More actions · Answer 4

ruadrauflessa (9/17/2010)
AndrewJacksonZA (9/17/2010)
At the company that I used to work for, this one lady *demanded* more and more columns in this one report until we had to shrink the font size down to 6. After that, she still wanted more columns to be displayed. We said that only so many columns could fit onto a landscaped A4 page and still be legible. She replied and said "if Crystal Reports can't do this then we'll just have to change the tool."
Erm, OK.
Epic... Glad to see I am not the only one with such a client. Currently sitting with a report on font size 8 going over an A2 Landscape. Completely ridiculous.

I've seen the same thing. I try to understand what they really want and offer alternatives.

Wayne West SSC-Insane Points: 22586 More actions · Answer 5

I had a teacher who told me of a system rewrite that she did. When she began the project, she compiled a list of all of the required reports. System went live, had some fixes required, and everything went fairly smooth. Then she got a call from a department saying that they weren't receiving their "numbers" report. She checked her list, and all reports were accounted for. She went to the department and asked to see a copy of their numbers report.

It was a core dump. Whatever the report had been, it crashed, produced a core dump, and the department received it and dutifully filed it away, without having a clue as to what it was or wasn't. But they weren't getting their numbers report, dammit!

At my previous job we conducted a multi-week Crystal training session for our ERP system. The problem was that the ERP vendor wouldn't release a good data dictionary and their naming scheme (such as it was) was crazy obtuse, so if you needed a report, you were pretty much dependent on the vendor to produce a view. I'd be surprised if more than 5% of the people attending that training ever produced a report.

If there's no statutory requirement to maintain hardcopy, drop it in to Excel or Access and teach them how to drill down.

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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]