Judy, As Phil alluded to, each reporting package has its strengths and weaknesses. Access is cheap, quick to develop in, and can saturate the network connection between the server and the PC when running a report(been there, done that).
When you stay within Access's limits it is a good tool to use. This requires simple queries and/or making sure that the only data that comes back across the network is data that you want to appear on the report. Often times a simple SQL query does not accomplish this. For that, a stored procedure needs to be created on the server that performs the business logic there and spits only the results back to Access. For a previous Access/DB2 V5 (OS/390) app we created, I had one SP that generated a page full of summary info and then spit one row with all the results back to Access. Run time was good across a slow network connection. If you'd like additional details/info, contact me off-group. I'm not knocking the other packages since I've never used them. Just the opinions of someone who has stressed (and been stressed by) Access. Thanks Jason >>> "Judith Kibler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/07/02 11:26AM >>> Hello all, We run the Baan ERP application on AIX 4.3.3 and DB2 UDB EE v7.2. Our customer has a need to do adhoc reporting against the Baan DB2 database. Our first cut at providing a cost-effective solution was to copy the data from a few DB2 tables to corresponding Access tables for them to report against. We refresh that data nightly. Over time, our customer's needs have grown, and they are now requesting several more tables to be copied to Access, thereby requiring a much larger window of time to refresh. We have come to the conclusion that they soon will outgrow the original solution, and we are looking at other options. Our first thought was to allow the users to link directly to the DB2 data, using Access links via the DB2 ODBC driver. They could continue to use (with some fairly significant modifications) their existing Access macros/queries. Our obvious concerns are with the performance of their queries, as well as the effect their querying will have on Baan application performance. We are also entertaining the idea of other reporting software, such as Crystal Reports. Any comments, suggestions, warnings, etc. would be welcomed! Many thanks, Judy - ::: When replying to the list, please use 'Reply-All' and make sure ::: a copy goes to the list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). *** You are subscribed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** To unsubscribe, send 'unsubscribe' to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
