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Reporting tool suggestions

  • June 12, 2023
  • 6 replies
  • 2 views
KathleenHambrick

There are two truths I live by - Never start a land war in Africa and PICK (English, retrieve) is HORRIBLE at creating reports!

Having moved into a position at a company using Universe, they somehow didn't know that they need a report writer package and have been coding Excel reports through FTD. This is very time consuming and not particularly good at reports. In the past I have used Crystal reports, PHP, ODBC, etc. 

Can I get you alls opinion what is the most straightforward, most robust report writer out of Universe (PICK)? Ideally one not overly expensive ;)

Thanks!

Kathleen



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Kathleen Hambrick
Programmer at Colwell
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    6 replies

    John Jenkins
    Forum|alt.badge.img+1
    • John Jenkins
    • Participating Frequently
    • June 12, 2023

    There are two truths I live by - Never start a land war in Africa and PICK (English, retrieve) is HORRIBLE at creating reports!

    Having moved into a position at a company using Universe, they somehow didn't know that they need a report writer package and have been coding Excel reports through FTD. This is very time consuming and not particularly good at reports. In the past I have used Crystal reports, PHP, ODBC, etc. 

    Can I get you alls opinion what is the most straightforward, most robust report writer out of Universe (PICK)? Ideally one not overly expensive ;)

    Thanks!

    Kathleen



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    Kathleen Hambrick
    Programmer at Colwell
    ------------------------------

    Kathleen,

    Hoping this helps somewhat:  I'm not able to make specific recommendations but have seen customers using Crystal Reports and Business Objects both with great success..

    Noting that JDBC tends to be faster than ODBC, though many find ODBC easier to set up on the client side.

    Regards,

    John Jenkins. 



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    John Jenkins
    Thame, Oxfordshire
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    JJ
    Shawn Waldie
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    There are two truths I live by - Never start a land war in Africa and PICK (English, retrieve) is HORRIBLE at creating reports!

    Having moved into a position at a company using Universe, they somehow didn't know that they need a report writer package and have been coding Excel reports through FTD. This is very time consuming and not particularly good at reports. In the past I have used Crystal reports, PHP, ODBC, etc. 

    Can I get you alls opinion what is the most straightforward, most robust report writer out of Universe (PICK)? Ideally one not overly expensive ;)

    Thanks!

    Kathleen



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    Kathleen Hambrick
    Programmer at Colwell
    ------------------------------

    I'll plug Informer.

    It has native support for MV (including Universe), and I'm guessing it's one of the less expensive offerings.



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    Shawn Waldie
    enterprise application developer
    Rocket Forum Shared Account
    Los Angeles CA US
    ------------------------------
    KathleenHambrick
    • KathleenHambrick
    • Author
    • Participating Frequently
    • June 12, 2023

    I'll plug Informer.

    It has native support for MV (including Universe), and I'm guessing it's one of the less expensive offerings.



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    Shawn Waldie
    enterprise application developer
    Rocket Forum Shared Account
    Los Angeles CA US
    ------------------------------

    Yes! I couldn't remember the name of that - Informer. I have used that before as well.

    Thank you for your recommendation!

    Kathleen



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    Kathleen Hambrick
    Programmer at Colwell
    ------------------------------
    Doug Averch
    Forum|alt.badge.img+1
    • Doug Averch
    • Participating Frequently
    • June 12, 2023

    Yes! I couldn't remember the name of that - Informer. I have used that before as well.

    Thank you for your recommendation!

    Kathleen



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    Kathleen Hambrick
    Programmer at Colwell
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    A beautiful open-source tool reporting tool called BIRT is based on EclipseIDE. EclipseIDE is used in xAdmin, BDT, and other tools from Rocket Software.

    Gosh, we have used BIRT for years and can generate reports in XLSX, DOCX, PDF, and HTML by just telling BIRT what format at runtime you would like. The data is JSON arrays created in UniBasic that are passed up the runtime BIRT that uses a Universe and Unidata interface. BIRT is used by JIRA, IBM, Workday, and many others.



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    Doug Averch
    Owner
    U2 Logic
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    Doug Averch Owner https://www.u2logic.com/
    Dianne Ackerman

    There are two truths I live by - Never start a land war in Africa and PICK (English, retrieve) is HORRIBLE at creating reports!

    Having moved into a position at a company using Universe, they somehow didn't know that they need a report writer package and have been coding Excel reports through FTD. This is very time consuming and not particularly good at reports. In the past I have used Crystal reports, PHP, ODBC, etc. 

    Can I get you alls opinion what is the most straightforward, most robust report writer out of Universe (PICK)? Ideally one not overly expensive ;)

    Thanks!

    Kathleen



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    Kathleen Hambrick
    Programmer at Colwell
    ------------------------------

    I'd like to offer mvQuery as an option - full disclosure, we (Aptron) just took it over recently.  But it's very simple to setup and there is a free evaluation period if you want to check it out:

    mvquery - Aptron

    -Dianne



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    Dianne Ackerman
    Vice President
    Aptron Corporation
    Florham Park NJ US
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    Manu Fernandes
    Forum|alt.badge.img+2

    There are two truths I live by - Never start a land war in Africa and PICK (English, retrieve) is HORRIBLE at creating reports!

    Having moved into a position at a company using Universe, they somehow didn't know that they need a report writer package and have been coding Excel reports through FTD. This is very time consuming and not particularly good at reports. In the past I have used Crystal reports, PHP, ODBC, etc. 

    Can I get you alls opinion what is the most straightforward, most robust report writer out of Universe (PICK)? Ideally one not overly expensive ;)

    Thanks!

    Kathleen



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    Kathleen Hambrick
    Programmer at Colwell
    ------------------------------

    HI,

    First of all, decades ago, with BASIC, we write an ETL  to sql-normalize our mv'ed db. 

    With schedule we sync our production db into a datawarehouse which merge all machines, all accounts, all files, all fields (am/vm/svm) into table with unique key (machine/account/file/key{/assoc}) .

    Then, I can suggest two products  : Qlik Sense and PowerBI 

    But the learning curve is long and high...

    with kind regards



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    Manu Fernandes
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