Migrating Reports - Interface and All - to Intranet

[PatrickA]

All,

I have been asked to make 1 report I created available so users can
run the report and view the results via our Intranet, and I have no
idea where to start / what technologies to
investigate, and am looking for some general guidance.

I created the report in Access 2003.
The report uses a query that taps into 3 different DBs, 2 ODBC and 1 POSTGRE, all on our network.
The underlying query has 4 parameters, which the user supplies (or skips) using the standard MS Access dialog boxes.
There is one "hidden" parameter, which is login ID, which I am getting via "apiGetUserName."
The report results are sorted, grouped, sub-totaled and totaled.

Given the above, what is the simplest and most reliable technology /
method I can use to create a version of the report that will run via
our Intranet, display there and hopefully print nicely?

Thanks

Patrick

 

[Mark Andrews]

Patrick,

This is not an easy question! There are a number of reporting tools that
work over the web, low end popular ones are Crystal reports and active
reports.
High end popular ones are Business Objects, Cognos, Actuate, MicroStrategy,
SQl Server Reporting services.

You could switch to one of these technologies.

I have sold a product for about 10 years to put Access reports on the web
called the "RPT Software report server". It's a product that runs on the
server and
controls one instance of Access and create reports in PDF format. It works
in conjunction with a COM component and whatever web technology you
are using to create the web page that calls the report.

In general you need to create web pages to collect the report params and
then when the user click a button a call is made which returns a PDF file
which gets redirected to the user. You can read more about report server on
my website.

The access database can make the report in the same way it does now (except
no popups (all params must be supplied by the web page)).

You can also buy the source for report server and tweak it to meet your
needs (about half of our customers go that route).

Hope that gives you some help,
Mark
RPT Software
http://www.rptsoftware.com

 

[PatrickA]

Thanks, Mark.

What are your thoughts on using MS SQL Server Reporting Services?

Patrick

 

[Mark Andrews]

If you have SQl Server in house and don't mind the licensing, I like SQL
Server reporting services very much.

They should of made the newest version a little better than what they did,
but it jumped up to be one of my favorites.

Sorry for the slow response,
Mark
RPT Software
http://www.rptsoftware.com

Thanks, Mark.

What are your thoughts on using MS SQL Server Reporting Services?

Patrick