JAG

James Griffiths Ltd

Reporting and analysis

 

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Reports and Analysis

One of the functions of a database is to produce reports. Accurate and timely reports enable management to make informed decisions.

Reports are one of the ways that data can be presented to people who may, or may not, be part of your organisation. It is important that they look right and professional. They can convey a message about your organisation, in the same way that your dress does about you. 

Very often the data is there, but it's not in an easily accessible format. A good report doesn't look like a computer printout of raw data. It should be clearly presented with appropriate summaries. The key points of the report should be easily accessible by the reader.

Reports created for browsers are accessible throughout an organisation on an intranet and from anywhere in the world if on the internet.

As well as reports, spreadsheets can be a powerful way of analysing data. Spreadsheets, containing the relevant data, can be produced at the click of a button, either using a workbook template for a pre-defined layout, or simply as a plain spreadsheet.

 

Reporting Tools

Reports can be created and designed with various software packages. VB and Delphi contain their own reporting tools.

Crystal Reports is a dedicated reporting software package that can be used on its own, or with other programming packages.

Intranet/internet reports can created using Interdev and ASP.

Access contains its own reports that can only be created within Access. However, snapshots of data can be saved, e-mailed and read by anyone having the Access Snapshot Reader installed, which is freely available from Microsoft.