Before I retire, I need to pass on at least a large chunk of my database-reporting knowledge to my co-worker. He is smart and interested, so I’m sure he can learn it. As for tools, our office will be on SSRS and they are willing to send him to school in that some time next year, so he needs something in the meantime.
I have been using Crystal Reports for reports and AQT for queries. I can train him on these, and pass him my licenses when I leave (maybe, if our IT department can find the licenses, which may be doubtful). But these tools are not very user-friendly. And there are a number of free tools around that he should be able to get by with until he can use SSRS, at least some of which seem to be pretty easy to use.
The main requirements are that it needs to work with Oracle 8 or 9, and to export the results into Excel. Oh, yes, and the download should not be through CNET. I would expect almost all of them to meet those qualifications.
Are you looking for SQL tools (that is, database management) or reporting tools? It’s a bit unclear from your post, but I assume the latter.
I don’t have a great deal of experience in this department, since I normally work with commercial software, but of the open-source / free options that I’ve used, the only one that’s come close to a feature set close to something like SSRS or Tableau is Pentaho. I’m not sure how closely it’ll meet your requirements, but it’s worth looking into.
I find TOAD (by Quest Software, now owned by Dell, apparently) to be very useful every day. I primarily use it for interactive data browsing, but has billions of other uses (its import wizard is especially quick and accurate, vs. the MS tools). They have Oracle versions.
Raza, did you miss the word “free” in the OP? Toad is too expensive to invest in as a temporary measure. Or if I am mistaken, let me know and I apologize in advance.
Dervorin, yes I did mean reporting tools for SQL databases. I will take a look at your suggestion. Thanks.
Toad is available in a free edition, but I don’t think it’s what you’re looking for, although the title of the OP is a bit misleading in this regard. Toad doesn’t, as far as I’m aware, include any reporting features in any edition, paid or free.
I’ve used Crystal Reports for 15 years and always found it very easy. Especially for a formatted report thats suitable to submit to a boss within the organization. I wrote my vendor and insurance reports in Crystal too.
One option, would be for the OP to write some reports that extract the needed data into a file. Then import that into Crystal.
the advantage is theres only one table to import. A inexperienced person doesn’t have to pull in six tables and link them. I’ve done this a couple times for other depts with non-tech staff.
an example. Name table, address table, job table, anniversary dates table
link all that together and write one record for the employee extract. use a fixed field length in the file. Crystal reads these quite well. Or get fancy and use Access to build a real table that Crystal can use. I’ve done it both ways. The flat file is less hassle.
It does require running the extract first to build the file. Then run the reports against it.
From my experience learning a new database is the biggest obstacle for any new employee. They have to know the keys to link the tables. They have to know the relationships in the data. Our jobs table contains multiple records for each employee. You have to test the type of job code and assignment dates to select the current record. You don’t want the overtime job record that was entered last week. you want his current, full time job record. Grab the wrong one and you could report his 2011 salary. Changes in pay generate a new job record.
Takes several months for a newbie Tech employee to get comfortable with our database. Extracts that consolidate the data are a big help. They also provide snapshots of the data at specific times. I have extracts that build files every quarter. I may need to report from Q3 of 2012. I have that file.
Back to the OP. We use SQLPlus that came with Oracle. SQLPlus is great for complex queries that require some programming. Thats how I use it. Its not very good for pretty printed, formatted reports that I give my bosses.
I like SQL*Plus for short queries that I type in at the prompt. Direct the output to a file.