

Designing a Reporting System - btilly
http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/12/design-of-reporting-system.html

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euroclydon
This is great advice! I had never considered creating raw HTML tables of data
on my websites for the express purpose of having end users connect to them
with Excel.

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pstuart
Here's a way to easily do it with style:

<http://datatables.net/1.5-beta/extras/TableTools/>

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btilly
Did you read the story?

You're describing a technology to make a web page that can save data in Excel
format. The story describes how to help users set up complex Excel
spreadsheets that run a web report behind the scenes whenever they are
refreshed. I believe that the latter capability is much more useful to users
than the former.

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pstuart
I read the story.

My comment was a reply to a comment (not the story itself) which I felt was
germane.

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omouse
Would it be possible to use Open Office with this or IBM Lotus Symfony?

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redact207
Sharepoint, Excel Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services.

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btilly
That is fine if you want to pay for the full Microsoft stack and are already
in a full Microsoft environment. It doesn't work so well when your data lives
in a non-Microsoft environment, you have poorly organized legacy tables, and
or is a real need to establish consistent business metrics and terminology.

The reporting system I described was created in an organization with all of
those problems. It has no ongoing licensing costs, fits smoothly into the
existing non-Microsoft server environment, allowed me to hide the details of
convoluted legacy table structures and data split across databases, and got
different parts of the business to use the same metrics.

I consider it a sign of success that multiple people who moved on from that
organization later contacted me and said that one thing they really missed is
the reporting system that I had created. And yes, some of those people moved
into Microsoft environments that use the standard Microsoft stack of
solutions.

