Re: Best way to Extract Data from Oracle into Excel

Waldhausen wrote:

>>Just a quick caution ... if your organization is subject to
>>Sarbanes-Oxley doing so could be illegal. Be very very careful.

Lets work backwards on this one.

Numbers in a spreadsheet are used to make a financial decision. Can you audit the source of those numbers? How they got there? And trace them back to aggregates from specific financial transactions?

A copy of a spreadsheet is given to a financial analyst from a news organization and reported to stockholders. Can you audit the source of those numbers? How they got there? And trace them back to specific financial transactions or inventory levels or valuations?

Can you guarantee the laptop containing them won't be stolen? Can you guarantee the hard disk containing them is backed up? Can you guarantee the versioning of every "SAVE" and audit the changes?

Would you be willing to go to jail if you were the CIO and some geek in IT said "don't worry".

An increasing number of CFO's are saying "Hell no" and they are right. I was at a meeting just earlier this week with a CFO whose organization is not covered by Sarbanes-Oxley (they are a non-profit) and he was well aware of the legal liabilities were that to apply: And so was his attorney.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)