Report Writer

Tamarakay

Member
We recently went live (October 3) and need some input about Enterprise Report Writer. I feel this tool should be in the hands of very few people and at that, developers and programmers. Our upper management feels strongly that end users should be able to write reports. I think ERW is too powerful (or dangerous) of a tool to just hand out, even with training.

I need to gather information from other users about their report writer experiences, who has it, how that decision was made, any problems that have arisen regarding it, etc.

I also need to know what outside report writers others might be using. What works and what doesn't.

I appreciate and look forward to your input.

WinNT, Citrix
XE Update 2 SP15.1
Oracle 8i
 
We are on the way to go life in january 2002 and I'm also testing and writing reports with ReportWriter. As you say, its dangerous, if the enduser does not understand the ReportWriter. Only KeyUser or advanced user should use this tool. If you only want to have Lists without statusupdate or without update of the database, perhaps its possible for a few user.

We were also looking for CreateForm from UK and also for OptioSoft. But for the moment I have too few experience with the program.

Jörg
 
We've been live on OneWorld going on 3 years and our management too wanted our users to have access to ERW. But, after we discovered ERW's power we decided against giving our users access. Now only the Business Analyst have access. We even tried training some of our power users and ERW was just too much for them to comprehend.
What we went with for our users is a product called Corvu. I personally have not been involved, but from what I here it's pretty easy to use.

Hope this helps,

Chris Blackwell
 
Tamarakay,
1. Why not giving a chance to the upper management into writing 1 (ONE) single report by themselves?
They'll be getting first hand info, a practical approach on how ERW is really working, and, why not, competency in sharing their feelings about end users doing the same (based on their hands-on experience)!
2. JDEdwards emphasizes the ERW's ease of use but JDEList offers two specialized Forums:
-One World / XE Tips and Traps, and
-One World / XE Developers
where ERW makes maybe 50% of all posts.
3. We are extending ERW capabilities here by using FormScape.
4. It all depends on WHAT the ERW is required to do:
a) Plain Reports (no strings like Tables, Business Views, Data Structures, Table I/O, Business Functions atached),
b) Table Conversions,
c) Sophisticated UBEs,
... and the list never ends.
My personal oppinion is: have the in-house or out-sourced Business Analysts, Programming Analysts, or Developers taking care of ERWriting.
Warm regards,


LIVE: B732.1 SP12.2, Oracle 806, FormScape 2.1
SANDBOX: Xe SP15 & Update2, Oracle 8i
RS/6000, Citrix
 
Tamarakay,

First a warning - I am very opinionated on this subject.

My reasons for not giving end-users access to ERW for report-writing purposes are:

1. OneWorld's ERW is a dangerous tool to give to the general public. With ERW a user can access and modify almost any data inside of OneWorld.

2. ERW is a poor report-writing tool when compared to third party tools developed specifically for report writing. ERW is a batch programming tool first, a report writer second.

We use Crystal Reports as our end-user tool. Other's have found solutions such as Cognos or Brio to work for them.

Forms Management tools such as Optio and Formscape are not report writers. They take output from report writers and and reshape/re-direct them.

I suggest you search the forum's archives on this subject. It has been discussed in detail several times.

Regards,

Larry Jones
[email protected]
OneWorld XE, SP 15.1
HPUX 11, Oracle SE 8.1.6
Mfg, Distribution, Financials
 
Pretty much agree with all that is said here. I did want to add something we learned recently (a consultant figured this out).

A big concern of mine on this topic was that we run Payroll / HR and there are many files with all kinds of info in them that should not be in the hands of the average report writer.

He put row security on F9860 for F05 through F089999999 and V05 through V089999999.

This will stop anyone not authorized from creating a new report (or form or whatever) that references these objects. It is still not perfect (there is a small hole I will not expose here).

But it was a clever idea I thought.

AS400 V4R5, XE+XU1+35ESUs, SP16, NT-SQL7 for CO
 
Hi, I agree that ERW is not suitable tool for end-users but am curious how
JDE row security can be implemented in third party reporting tools.
Chris
OneWorld V7332
AS/400 INS NT
 
I believe as long as the third party reporting tools access the JDE
databases via the ODA driver, the JDE security should still be enforced.

Chi
 
Re: RE: Report Writer

Hi Cristina,

Row Security is only honored by 3rd party tools when you are using the ODA ODBC driver to access OneWorld data. Even then, ODA has been so bug-ridden that some have reported instances where the security has been by-passed.

The way we secure the data for these tools is using database security. Basically we have locked down the entire database and then created new views to which access is granted by database account. Only against these views can reporting be done.

Regards,

Larry Jones
[email protected]
OneWorld XE, SP 15.1
HPUX 11, Oracle SE 8.1.6
Mfg, Distribution, Financials
 
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