| Many proprietary database systems come with a | | | | Once you have access to the your database the |
| report writer but are too difficult to use. They need a | | | | software will let you see the tables and columns and |
| knowledge of SQL or they need an expensive expert | | | | all you need to do is to join up the tables you need to |
| to prepare the report. Sometimes there is no report | | | | produce the reports you need by linking on the |
| writer available at all. Here is a solution. | | | | common columns so you get unique rows of data. So |
| I have a client who had just this problem - he had a | | | | far there has been no fancy SQL syntax. There some |
| hospital departmental system that had been supplied | | | | know how you need on join types but that can be |
| to several hundreds centres but the report writer | | | | dealt with later. |
| available came from a large business intelligence | | | | Now you can see all your data items and can start to |
| vendor and it was just too difficult and tedious for a | | | | build your report by just dragging and dropping the |
| busy departmental manager. | | | | data items you need. You can readily create filters to |
| What is needed is a software package that lets you | | | | allow you to find the subsets of data you need. No |
| access your database e.g. SQL Server, Oracle, | | | | fancy SQL WHERE clause are needed. |
| MySQL, to get the answers you need today. All you | | | | The system I use can also produce highly visual |
| need to know to get started is to know the Database | | | | representations of the data in graphs and charts not |
| name, Server address, User Name and Password. | | | | just data columns with totals- data visualization is the |
| Getting internal IT help can be difficult too so you want | | | | buzz word. You'll stun your colleagues. You will be able |
| to disturb as them little as possible. You can't do any | | | | to spot trends and outliers in a snap. |
| harm to the database as you will be reading the data | | | | You can even construct dashboards that can be |
| only and not changing it, so you won't be causing any | | | | distributed around your department or company. |
| data validation issues. | | | | |