Reporting Tools Overview

Info-Link allows you to choose different front-end programs depending on your reporting needs. Viewpoint supports Excel, Access, and Crystal Reports.

The following table illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of these programs and identifies some guidelines for selecting which program to use.

This table illustrates that no one program is the best. Each program has its advantages and disadvantages, as well as appropriate uses. Whether or not one program is preferable to another also depends on how familiar you are with each application. Leverage your application decision according to your own strengths and knowledge, as well as the capabilities of the application.

Application

Strengths

Weaknesses

MS Excel

  • Familiar to most users

  • Spreadsheet format

  • Easy to create charts and formulas

  • Good for one-time/quick use

  • Limited query capability

  • Harder to automate reporting

  • Not "real-time" in nature

  • Limited to spreadsheet/chart views

MS Access

  • Powerful query capability including summary, make-table, append, find/match duplicates

  • Only recommended tool for writing to Spectrum tables

  • Easily automated

  • Great for repetitive reporting

  • Data can be accessed in "real-time" or "snap-shot"

  • Queries can be easily used by Excel or Word

  • Highly flexible reporting options

  • Programming capabilities

  • Requires understanding of relational databases

  • Reporting functionality is unfamiliar to most users

  • Not easily complied into run-time version

Crystal Reports

  • Excellent reporting and charting

  • Easy to distribute results to others via many different formats

  • Report format can be easily packaged into run-time versions, meaning only the developer must have a licensed copy of software

  • Great for repetitive reporting

  • Not good for one-time/quick use

  • Functionality is not familiar to most users

  • Limited query capabilities