Skip to main content

Understanding the User Requirements to Create Better Reports

In the first stage of the development, you determine what the user needs and expects.
While it may be tempting to skip this stage and start building right away, it is not a
good idea to do so. Without a clear understanding of the users and their reporting
needs, it is virtually impossible to create effective enterprise reports.

To define user requirements:
1) Gather relevant policies, business rules, and existing documentation
2) Observe users and their daily job activities
3) Interview a wide variety of users

Helpful questions to help you determine the user requirements:
1) What data will people want, and in what priority?
2) How is the data stored?
3) Is there a corporate standard that must be met? If so, define standard templates.
4) Will users want Web reports, paper reports, or both?
5) For Web reports, will the reports be static or dynamic?
6) Will users want charts in the report? If so, what data will be used in the graph?
7) Will users want to drill down on data? If so, plan on using hyperlinks.
8) Will users want to specify input parameters? If so, you need to create the necessary
parameters and establish the validation rules.
9) Will users want a report to be embedded in a form? If so, you will have to call the
report from a form and have the form pass the data to the report.
10) Will the same report serve different types of users? If so, you need to think about
report sectioning and report distribution.
11) Will the users want run-time customizations? If so, plan on using XML files.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Oracle Developer Technical Interview Questions

Here i am putting all the questions i had faced during my interviews ... Interview at “3i InfoTech”, Chennai:  1) What is flow of execution of WHEN-NEW-FORM-INSTANCE, WHEN-NEW-BLOCK-INSTANCE, and WHEN-NEW-ITEM-INSTANCE? 2) What is PRE-QUERY and POST-QUERY? When these triggers will fire? 3) If the object library with some blocks and triggers if a form inherited that object library if u doesn’t need some trigger to be inherited the can u delete that trigger from that form? 4) How u can call a report from a form? Which property u has set in runtime? 5) If u create a relation between two blocks in the form what are all triggers it will create? 6) What is a ref cursor? 7) To call a form which type of built-ins u has to use? 8) What is the main difference between expand and variable property for a text item in reports. 9) In a report layout there is accepted and rejected fields and it has a parameter when u run the report based on the parameter the output should sh...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oracle Reports - Changing the current mode (Confine or Flex)

To set or override Confine mode:  In the Paper Layout view, click  Confine On or Confine Off  in the toolbar to toggle the mode: On: child objects cannot be moved outside their enclosing parent objects. Off: child objects can be moved outside their enclosing parent objects. To set or override Flex mode:  In the Paper Layout view, click  Flex On or  Flex Off in the toolbar to toggle the mode: On: parent borders "stretch" when child objects are moved against them. The child object maintains the same distance from the side it moves against. Off: parent borders remain fixed when child objects are moved against them.
Post a Comment
Read more

Communicating with a RDBMS Using SQL

What is SQL? SQL Stands for Structured Query Language. I t is the  international  standard language for relational database management systems. It is useful for  accessing and manipulating data in a databases.  To access the database, you execute a structured query language (SQL) statement, which is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard language for operating relational databases.
Post a Comment
Read more