Re: Oracle access trough Excel

Q10641_at_paccvm.corp.mot.com (Troy Tinnes) writes:

>network - this method proved to be much faster.For those people who are
>still keen on making their own one-off reports, give them access to
>sqlplus or reportwriter.

  So what do you do when a user mistakingly types:

            DELETE FROM PAYROLL;
            COMMIT;

into SQL*Plus ? Ouch! :)

Although your solution seems flexible, SQL*Plus and Reportwriter are not exactly end user tools. There are tons of GUI based "do it yourself" reporting tools because they can be effective in giving end users access to data in an environment they are familiar with. Ever try to make a pie chart in ReportWriter ?

There's room for "canned" reports and (limited) ad-hoc reports in any application. It's a matter of giving your users what they want and what they can feasibly learn and use on a regular basis.

This is the direction most tools are going in. If the user is comfortable with Lotus or Excel, then give them the data there in as easy a way as possible. Heck, even WordPerfect now has some facilities for obtaining database data.

Just my $.02

Rich Holowczak
Rutgers University
holowcza_at_andromeda.rutgers.edu Received on Wed Mar 23 1994 - 23:11:21 CET