RE: Query Tools

[Joel Fritz <JFritz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Shaw [mailto:dshaw1@InfoAve.Net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 1999 12:30 PM
To: Midrange-L
Cc: John Bussert
Subject: Re: Query Tools

---big snip---

Teaching users how to use a query tool is typically much easier, in my
experience, than documenting your database well enough for them to find what
they're looking for without hand-holding.

---
Dave Shaw, General Nutrition, Greenville, SC
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The opinions expressed may not be my employer's unless I'm sufficiently
persuasive...


At first I thought you were saying teaching people to use a query tool made
it unnecessary to document the database.  Then I realized what you meant.

We are in the process of installing a pretty interesting tool called
Broadbase (data warehousing) that offers its own reporting or more
sophisticated reporting through Brio (a slick report writer +).  Biggest
hurdle in the project, which was supposed to take a lot of the ad hoc
reporting load off MIS, is education.  Most people without a programming
background don't take too well to doing the sorts of things that even the
most user friendly query tool makes them do.  When you add data base
relationships and (of course we don't have too much of it ourselves) bad
data base design to the mix, many end users feel like they're being taught
to swim by being pushed off a cliff.   
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