Reporting

Reporting Tool

Microsoft Access

A database creation and reporting tool for the Windows platform.

Available on UMW Windows computers

Mainstream product with many support avenues available

Fully functional relational database with lots of built in functions and wizards

Can be used to create very attractive and functional forms and reports

With some work by a report developer, report viewers and modifiers should have no trouble using this product in a very short period of time

Report developers with relational database experience will have no trouble learning how to use this tool.

Can be quirky at times

Stability/performance when using ODBC to communicate with remote databases is questionable

No built in "drill down" functionality in queries/reports

Currently:  The Advancement / Development Offices

Individuals with Report development will be able to use this tool for creating reports/databases from scratch. Provided the developer has made the database or report user friendly enough, all users should be able to "use" the report or database with minimal training.

Training is available through the DoIT training unit.

Support is available from the DoIT Training Unit and through the Help Desk, however users are responsible for building their own stand-alone database.

No cost for software that is part of the UMW standard package for Windows. UMW training is available at no cost to the user.

Microsoft Excel

A database, spreadsheet and reporting tool for Windows and Macintosh platforms.

Available on UMW Windows computers and Macintoshes

Easy to arrange data in a simple spreadsheet design, as well as sort, subtotal, and create pivot tables to analyze data

Easy to export to other MS Office products

Can be used to create charts and graphs using a GUI wizard

Limited amount of data can be stored in a user-friendly way

Good for reporting simple lists that need to be sorted or counted, but not at designing fancy presentations and formatted reports

Microsoft Query can sometimes be cumbersome to use

ODBC functionality is inconsistent

ODBC reporting creates a “load” on the servers.

Widely used for financial reporting and analysis. Many departments keep stand-alone spreadsheets in Excel.

Departments and individuals who want to analyze data locally.

UMW classes.

Support is available from the DoIT Training Unit and through the Help Desk, however users are responsible for building their own stand-alone database.

No cost for software that is part of the UMW standard package for Windows and Macintosh.

Oracle Discoverer

An ad-hoc query and analysis tool.

Very easy to learn

Reports can be generated directly from the tool with little to no formatting

Has a direct link to MS Excel that can be used for in depth analysis of data

Summary redirection makes reports run very quickly

Detects fantraps

Can create folders that match the business needs of specific areas in a department and control security to each folder or report separately

Importing and exporting of SQL

Can generate query statistics to see what fields users are using and which they are not

Ability to drill up and down through the data to achieve more or less detail

Ability to create hierarchies and relationships within the data.

Maintenance requires a department to have a fairly technical support person to manage the "intermediate" datamart

Does not do sophisticated formatting as Oracle Reports does.

Registrar’s Office

Report viewers, report modifiers, and report developers. Most PC and Macintosh users would have no problem using this tool as it is similar to many Microsoft applications. This tool also has a viewer version that would allow low end users to only run saved reports.

Oracle education classes for those administering the product. An in-house training session or tutorial by an end user or administrator would be enough to train the typical report viewer or report modifier.

Oracle Reports

This product includes eight Components: Project Builder, Form Builder, Report Builder, Graphics builder, Query Builder, Schema Builder, Procedure Builder, and Translation Builder. Composed of Object Navigator, Layout Model, Property Palette and PL/SQL Editor. Can also be used with Oracle Forms to create attractive front ends for report viewers. Talks directly to the Oracle database via SQLnet.

Can build Web reports based on data dynamically served from the database

End users can request information simply by clicking a link on a Web page

Flexibility in formatting data

Supports multiple report types such as tables, matrices, group reports, and graphs, as well as combinations of these formats

Can build both simple and extremely complex reports

User-friendly, especially to report writers who are already familiar with Oracle tools

Has the familiar graphical user interface used by other Oracle Products such as Forms (used with Banner) and Discoverer

For simple reports written against the Datamart, end-users need only point and click, yet it is powerful enough to take advantage of the most complex PL/SQL logic against multiple tables.

Has many features such as report wizards, templates, data models, and layout models that have been created to make report-writing easy. However, these features only help to write the more simple reports.

To create the more complex reports, (where Oracle Reports really has great power), the report developer should have a good working knowledge of SQLPlus and PL/SQL. (trigger, procedure, function and package, etc.)

It would make little sense to use a powerful tool like Oracle Reports solely for the development of simple reports. Without significant knowledge about Oracle databases, a report developer would not be able to take the advantage of this powerful tool

Database Systems is beginning to use Oracle Reports to replace some of the more complex FOCUS reports. The Resources Office is also beginning to use this tool.

This tool has been designed for the report developer, although report modifiers could use some of the wizards to make modifications to existing reports. This tool can also be used and executed through Oracle's WebDB product.

On site instructor-led training class offered by Oracle Corporation. (4 days) or on-line technology-based training class also offered by Oracle Corporation.

Database Systems as well as other report developers.

SQL*Plus

A character based reporting tool which is the standard "Structured Query Language" plus proprietary functionality that has been added by Oracle Corporation.

Is the underlying programming structure used by many software packages? With the exception of formatting commands, it is therefore very portable

Can do fairly complicated computations

Can often be used in combination with other reporting tools

Difficult to learn (requires programming logic)

Reports can be difficult to format, and formatting commands can only be ported to servers running SOL*Plus

Not capable of encompassing very sophisticated logic

IS/Database Systems, Resources, Admissions, Registrar's Office

Technical support staff, Report developers

Courses are offered through Pinnacle and Oracle Corporation that cover SQL and SQL*Plus.

Database Systems

SQL*Plus licenses come as part off our campus enterprise license with Oracle at no additional cost to our end users.

SPSS

A statistical package that has gone through many versions, runs on Windows, Unix, and (recently) Macintosh. It has recently acquired a more commercial (as opposed to academic) orientation. Besides reporting it can do extensive data manipulation, a wide variety of statistical procedures, and powerful output procedures both tabular and graphing.

Extensive collection of procedures

Nice GUI interface

Can be used interactively with direct editing of data, and with dropdown menus which access most of its features

Can be used with syntax files (programs) so complete procedures can be documented and rerun

Syntax files can be run live or in a production mode (in the background)

Has a very flexible and powerful Tables procedure for report writing which allows complex data summaries to output in a very compact form

Output is in pivot tables that are attractive and can be edited extensively. The output looks very good.

Has an ODBC option. (We have no experience with setting this up.)

Available on campus as key served stand-alone software.

Has powerful features such as a recode command which can be used instead of a complex set of nested if statements

All output procedures recognize missing values and have options for handling them

Front end to the report procedures takes time to learn and requires understanding of data organization

Output is in its own format (can be imported as images into Word, the output is easily read using SPSS, and a viewer is available [though not at Wellesley] to make the output generally available)

SPSS is used in several academic social science departments and is known by many social science faculty and students. It is also used by various research groups, it is not especially known by the administrative user community. Departments using SPSS include the Office for Institutional Research (OIR), Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science and Economics as well as researchers at the Centers for Research on Women.

Staff who already use or are familiar with other statistical packages. SPSS is used for reporting which requires data manipulation (preferably from a single database).

Most people learn SPSS from someone else. Like any software, the only way to learn it is to use it. If the report writer already knows a statistical package, a day or so is all that is needed to be able to use SPSS. If one does not know a statistical package or programming concepts (like "if statements" or "do computes" ) then learning the software takes longer.

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Extracting Data to a Spreadsheet