Enterprise Reporting Test

Every piece of software looks great at the demo.  And every software salesman assures you that just like the Vegomatic their software can do it all.  If you believe that you may wind up buying the software equivalent of swampland.

To make sure that the Enterprise Reporting Solution you are considering can actually deliver industrial strength information to your organization, follow this simple series of tests. If the software you are evaluating can handle these, than you might have a keeper.  If not, than I would suggest that you keep looking.  The rules are simple. In case you haven't guessed WebFOCUS has no problem passing these tests and more.

• No involvement from the DBA. Database Administrators are scarce and valuable resource.   They shouldn't have to create new tables just to create new reports. With many products that's just what has to happen. Not only does it waste DBA time, you have data duplication that would rival anything in the pre-database days and all the problems that brings to the organization.
• No 3GL code.  While everything can't be point and click, when it get's past the point and click stage, you shouldn't be back writing obscure 3GL code like Basic or Pascal. That went out in the 1970s.  Just because you are on the web doesn't mean you have to go backwards.

With that settled let's get started.  First the data for the test.