Design – Build – Run: Applied Practices and Principles for Production-Ready Software Development

9.5. Summary

In this chapter, you have seen that reporting is used to assist the business decision-making process. You have seen that reports can be used to assist in supporting and maintaining the system as well as helping with issue investigation. Report design and construction can help define the database, but more important, they can take time, so it's worth starting early.

The following are the key points to take away from this chapter:

• Reports are not just for the business. Reports can also be used by technical staff, including operations and service delivery for a variety of different purposes, including:

  • Monitoring

  • Trend analysis (performance, events, and alerts)

  • Incident investigation

• Keep reports simple and easy to use. The reports you design and develop should include the most relevant information for its purpose. There are two primary elements to any report — the selection criteria and the output.

• Report selection criteria should be limited to the most appropriate values. Some typical report criteria include the following:

  • Specific field values

  • Value ranges (e.g., between two values)

  • Value masks (such as like clauses)

  • Date and time ranges

    Where possible default values should be included.

• Report output should be limited to the most appropriate information. The output of the report should be easy to read and only contain the most appropriate information. The report output can include the following:

  • Images

  • Lists or groups or records

  • Individual fields

  • Charts and graphs

• Gather the reporting ...