Content area
Full text
Applications: Brio.Report SQR Server 6.x, Oracle Reports 6i
As organizations grow, there's an increase in demand from the business community for quality reports that provide detailed and summary-level information about the organization. This increase in demand for information has led technical professionals to try to identify a reporting tool that is easy to work with, scalable to grow with the organization, capable of retrieving information from complex data structures, and can be used to develop Web-based reports.
Faced with this challenge, how can technical professionals decide on what reporting tool is right for their organization? In this article, we're going to evaluate Brio.Report SQR Server and Oracle Reports 6i as enterprise reporting tools.
Brio Reports
Brio Reports was formerly known as SQR. In January 1997, MITI, the maker of SQR, changed the corporate name to SQRIBE Technologies. This was done to leverage the name recognition of SQR.
Then in February 1999, in a stock transaction valued at $270 million, Brio Technologies acquired SQRIBE Technologies. Brio then changed the name of SQR to Brio.Report SQR Server. SQR transitioned from a mainframe reporting tool in Version 3.x to a client / server reporting tool in Versions 4.x and 6.x. Version 6.x now offers a Report Builder component and Web-based reporting capability. SQR also can function as a utility tool because it supports Data Manipulation Language (DML) functions, so you can use it to load and update database information.
Oracle Re orts 6i
Oracle Reports was designed as a client/ server reporting tool to work in conjunction with Oracle Forms. The integration with Forms can be seen in how Reports was designed with an Object Navigator and with a Property Palette to list properties of objects within the report. Oracle Reports 6i is a SQL-based reporting tool that you can use for application-level reporting and Webbased reports. With its Web capability, Oracle Reports is positioned as a Business Intelligence (BI) tool that can be used to generate reports from a Web-based application or through an Enterprise Information Portal.
Report functionality
Report functionality gives us information on how the tool approaches report generation. Let's discuss features that can enhance this development.
Brio.Report SQR Server is made up of the following components:
SQR Compiler. Takes report source code written...