ASP.NET 3.5 Enterprise Application Development with Visual Studio® 2008: Problem - Design - Solution

Chapter 9. Reporting

For some reason, reporting always seems to be an afterthought when it comes to developing an application. Everybody is concerned about the design of the data entry screens and what data should be collected, but far too often applications are built and quickly become a data graveyard. The data goes in but it never comes out. Problems always seem to arise near the end of the development cycle when users start thinking about reports, and then they realize that they aren't collecting the right information or they don't have enough information for a report to make sense. In these situations, you are forced to tell the user that either you can't create the report or you have to make wholesale changes to the application in order to accomplish what they want. That's not a position you ever want to be in.

Another issue with reporting is that many applications don't even include reporting, and an entirely different tool and application is used for reports. There are plenty of tools that just handle reporting, such as Business Objects Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, Hyperion, SQL Server Reporting Services — the list goes on and on. Producing reports takes an entirely different skill set than the typical programmer possesses.