RE: OLAP Reporting Packages with MAPICS

I apologize if I missed the original thread to understand the question that
was asked, but I wanted to give some input on the current discussions.

We're using Seagate Info and allowing our users to view their reports on our
Intranet web server.  The web server, as well as the Seagate Info engine run
local to the AS/400.  With this setup, I usually don't have a bandwidth
issue.

However, if you need a remote user to run Crystal Reports over a WAN, you
can include some extra conditions in the "Select Expert" to reduce the
amount of records returned back to Crystal Reports.  For example, if your
database has over 500,000 records, you can add an extra condition in the
Select Expert that says only give me records since Jan. 1.  The SQL code
that is sent to the AS/400 will add this condition to the Where clause.
This is hard to explain in e-mail, but the bottom line is, if you utilize
fields that are recognized on the AS/400 in the "Select Expert", these will
be placed in the SQL query that is passed to the AS/400.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Heller, Ed [mailto:eheller@defianceprecision.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 3:19 PM
To: mapics-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: OLAP Reporting Packages with MAPICS


Well . . . my biggest problem with Crystal Reports is (physical) distance.
Using Crystal alone means that the select/filter is not performed until the
data is brought onto the user's PC. Thus, if that user only needed to look
at 500 inventory transaction records, she would still need to download all
500,000 records to get the ones she wanted. Running through a 384K line from
the AS/400 100 miles away, she could essentially go to lunch waiting just to
get the data local. Plus, since that same line handles e-mail, Internet,
data collection, etc., my phone would be ringing off the hook from people
wondering where our bandwidth went to.

Agreed, Crystal is a nice tool, and perhaps I should take a look at
Crystal's back-end solution (sit an NT box for it next to the 400). We'll
have to see.

Thanks!

Ed

> -----Original Message-----
> From: De Vlieger Kris [mailto:devlieger.kris@village.uunet.be]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 2:46 PM
> To: mapics-l@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: OLAP Reporting Packages with MAPICS
>
>
> Choosing a package is allways hard, but I think you should
> remember none
> lasts forever and everything may change in the wink of an eye
> in software
> (alas).  Cr. Reports is good and easy to use, and you have it
> already.  It
> may be low end, but still it can do much more than 'pretty
> up' Query/400 in
> my opinion.  Vanguards tools are another class entirely.  If
> both ends are
> still an option, I think you should reconsider whether you
> know the target
> well enough?  Both are excellent solutions, to similar but different
> problems.
> Have you tried finding out what
>     CR can't do (you know, you have the enterprise version?)
>     you need (you should know)
>     Vanguard has from the above (you can find out )
> ?
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