Initial Expectations

How hard could it be?  A new Data Mart was being constructed for a national health care provider and the client activity reports used on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis needed to be modified to use this new Data Mart and report this new aggregate data.  I thought this project was going to be simple and straightforward.  I had never been a part of a Business Intelligence remediation effort before, but how hard could it be?  The logic was already complete. The reports were already built.  The combination of both these elements was already tried, tested, and in production.  All that needed to be done was rename some tables, update some column names and update the database targets, right?  Could it really be as simple as a using Find & Replace?

Common Challenges

Reporting is one of the most utilized functional parts of any Enterprise Applications, and most often business users will rely upon reports to understand their business health through transactional details, Summary reports or dashboard visualization. The primary source for any Report is the data that the enterprise applications hold. The purpose of this blog is to touch upon the key features and usage of Crystal Reports and on how it’s changed over years into being the most versatile reporting tool.

SAP Crystal Reports, part of SAP Business Objects component, is one of the most versatile and flexible Reporting tool that has evolved into a more matured stable product over the years after its acquisition twice, first by Business Objects and then Business Objects acquisition by SAP. It can be seamlessly integrated with any application database.

Interestingly enough, this thought comes to me as I'm devouring my dinner at a local buffet-style restaurant establishment.  Maybe it's due to the influence of the Food Network, but it seems as if I have recently trended towards explaining technical concepts with food analogies.

Quality data fulfills the business' needs. Where as, mass quantity of data may satisfy the end-user's wants.  Of course there are trade-offs!

Sure, while standing in the buffet line, if I'm asked what I want, I'll ask to have food items piled on to my plate overflowing onto my tray.  However, when I sit to consume the food (read: querying data), it takes longer to load it all off of my plate and into my mouth (read: generating report), to the extent that I'm becoming groggy and sluggish (read: lag in rendering output).