In the
world driven by information, it would be hard to find a more significant
business task than data analysis and reporting. Although this highly
competitive market offers a number of high quality reporting tools, SiMX TARGET
Reports should be a product of choice for a large segment of users and tasks.
This
article intends to prove this point by comparing TARGET Reports with one of the
leaders in the reporting tools industry: Crystal Reports from Business Objects.
Unlike
Crystal Reports, which tends to cover virtually any reporting task and therefore
is overwhelmingly complex, TARGET Reports is concentrated on the well defined
management reporting workflow typical for the majority of business
organizations.
Such a “targeted” reporting solution enables
business users to easily produce reports avoiding involvement of trained
technical specialists thus significantly reducing the overall reporting costs.
Extensive analysis of corporate management
reporting workflows demonstrated that most of the reporting tasks are based on
data aggregation. Virtually any summary report setup could be divided into three
independent parts: a) data access, b) data processing, and c) presentation.
Data Access
The typical reporting tasks usually involve
multiple data sources distributed among various databases and other data
storages. Modern technology offers a variety of data access drivers providing access to virtually any data source.
-
Selecting and configuring
data access drivers and data connections
-
Creating dynamic views by
linking related table
Data Processing
Despite the possible complexity of the
reporting algorithms the principle structure of a data processing setup is
identical for most of reports and consists of the three components:
-
Grouping rules
for creating groups and their sorting
-
Reporting Fields
and algorithms for their calculation and sorting
-
Record selection
limitations (scope expression)
Presentation
Aside of the artistic features and free
positioning of reporting elements on the page the principle presentation forms
are also limited and fall into two categories with a few variations inside each
of them:
-
Tabular:
Nested, Subtitled, and Cross-tab (with or w/o details)
-
Charts:
Point, Line, Bar, Pie, and their variations (2D/3D)
TARGET Reports
offers interactive means (as opposed to wizard-based approach) for setting the
data-related setup and lets selecting/change the desired presentation form on
the fly. It is the shortest way of achieving the goal for users concerned about
the content of the reports (as long as reports look professional and are easy to
read) rather then on their layout features.
Feature
Comparison
|
Feature |
TARGET
Reports
(TR) |
Crystal Reports
(CR) |
Comment |
|
Free layout editing |
- |
+ |
As opposed to CR TR was
designed to produce fully automated report layouts optimized for a
particular output format. |
|
Automated report
formatting |
+ |
- |
TR supports optimized
generation of tabular report elements such as Nested, Subtitled, and
Cross-tab (with or w/o details) tables and charts: Point, Line, Bar, Pie,
and their variations |
|
Convertible
presentation forms |
+ |
- |
TR lets the user to
switch from one presentation form to another with just one click.
Different types of tables and charts can be converted into each other
|
|
Multiple data sources
per report document |
+ |
- |
Each TR report
document can have unlimited number of data elements connected to multiple
data sources. |
|
Linking of Resource
Objects |
+
|
- |
TR allows visual linking
of objects such as Data source, Dictionary, and Scope between different
data elements to simplify maintenance. |
|
Output formats: HTML,
RTF, PDF, XML/XSL |
+ |
+ |
TR can be configured
for saving run the output report documents in different formats and/or
open them in appropriate browsers. |
|
Summary table export:
CSV, XLS, MDB, DBF, any DBMS |
+ |
- |
Each data page element
can be configured for saving (on run) the output report data as a database
table. |
|
Cross-Database Views |
+ |
+- |
TR fully supports
cross-database tables’ linking, while CR does not
support cross drivers summaries. |
|
Advanced Grouping
Scales |
+ |
- |
This feature is especially
helpful while creating comparative trends and stratification reports. |
|
Group sorting by
aggregate functions (by Subtotals) |
+ |
+ |
TR offers a simple
drag and drop interface for setting group sorting with unlimited number of
sorting levels using any aggregate calculations. |
|
Top N groups report |
+ |
- |
TR offers an option of
generating reports with only top N groups shown. |
|
Recursive Calculated
Fields |
+ |
- |
TR permits the usage
of already created calculated fields within the definition of other
calculated fields. |
|
Aggregate Calculated
Fields |
+ |
- |
TR allows usage of
aggregate functions within definitions of calculated fields. |
|
Script-based
customization of group calculations and database driven querying |
+ |
+ |
TR enables dynamic
customization of all report setup components through VB Script functions
written for various report generating related events such as OnStartReport,
OnStartGroup, OnRecord, OnFinishGroup, and OnFinishReport. |
|
Programming automation |
+ |
+ |
TR can be used as a
programmatically controlled component with virtually any development
environment |
Crystal Reports offers two main workflows for
designing reports: a wizard-based step-by-step walkthrough for fast and easy
generation of typical reports and free editing for producing custom arbitrary
reports. Crystal Reports allows creation of multiple reports, but does not
support integration of multiple reporting elements into one reporting document.
TARGET Reports addresses mainstream
management reporting tasks offering an extremely easy-to-use environment for
generation of professional easy-to-read reports. Unlike Crystal Reports, where
the WHAT to report is mixed with HOW, TARGET Reports provides a complete
separation between the two with complete automation of the HOW part. This means
that the user can concentrate on WHAT to report and is able to change HOW with
just a couple of clicks.
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