A conceptual question about RS (when is it usefull)

In my department we are trying to benefit from the RS: we create a lot of
reports for the Marketing, and generally supply them through an Excel
spresdsheet:
1. Ad hoc reports with data which won't be updated.
2. Reports connected to views which are updated once they are oppened by the
user (=the Excel spredsheet is oppened).
3. Reports connected to tables which are daily updated (if the view is to
heavy).
In all the three situations, the RS doesn't help us.
I guess this tool is usefull for information departments who want to publish
reports to many subacribers at once
or to subscribers who need a "hard copy" of the report (=to print it)
or for interactive reports in which the user has to choose values (a year or
a customer or a product) and we don't want to write code.
Am I right?
Any comment or suggestion will be wellcome!RS is not excel and Excel is no RS. You have gotten used to Excel for
reporting and that is fine but it seems to me that you are approaching this
specifically from the viewpoint of a spreadsheet. If you look at what RS can
do you will find that you will be designing reports in a whole new way.
You say that RS doesn't help you. If you are already really skilled in Excel
and want to keep doing things the way you are then fine. It seems to me you
have already made your decision.
Some capabilities of RS:
1. You can schedule long running reports to run at a certain time, then the
user will use that snapshot.
2. Lots of caching configurations you can do
3. Drill through. This is huge. Instead of one mega report, put the data
they need and then provide links that pull up additional information in
reports passing the parameters to the report.
I'm not sure why you say RS doesn't help you in the three items you list.
Seems like it does for #3 for sure. Perhaps #2 as well.
As far as interactive reports, you can set defaults so the user doesn't have
to make a decision but can change it if they want to.
--
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
"Geri Reshef" <GeriR@.Dubek.co.il> wrote in message
news:%23NwTAWI%23EHA.3260@.TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> In my department we are trying to benefit from the RS: we create a lot of
> reports for the Marketing, and generally supply them through an Excel
> spresdsheet:
> 1. Ad hoc reports with data which won't be updated.
> 2. Reports connected to views which are updated once they are oppened by
the
> user (=the Excel spredsheet is oppened).
> 3. Reports connected to tables which are daily updated (if the view is to
> heavy).
> In all the three situations, the RS doesn't help us.
> I guess this tool is usefull for information departments who want to
publish
> reports to many subacribers at once
> or to subscribers who need a "hard copy" of the report (=to print it)
> or for interactive reports in which the user has to choose values (a year
or
> a customer or a product) and we don't want to write code.
> Am I right?
> Any comment or suggestion will be wellcome!
>

A Conceptual question - regarding using Statistical functions

Hi,

I want to use functions like Standard Deviation, Variance, and other forms of these (StdDevp, Varp) but am not clear about what these really do. All I know is that if I am clear about these functions, I can really put these to good use. BTW, maybe there are many more functions in addition to the one's that I have listed??

Can you kindly assist me with a mini example in understanding what these functions do?

Suppose I have the Total and Average of orders. How can these functions be put to use? Kindly help me out if you can come up with a better example.

I'll be grateful for your help.

Many TIA.We can't give you a crash course on statistics in these posts. For example, "Average" can be a very misleading term unless you know the Standard Deviation of your population, as well as other statistical descriptions of your data's distribution.

SQL Server's Books On Line does not do a good job of explaining the use or purpose of statistical functions, but if you look the equivalent functions up in Microsoft Excel's Help system, you will find brief guides on how to use the functions.|||There are, however, many "statistics tutorials" on the Internet. A search at http://www.google.com for these keywords produced 1,620,000 hits.

Like this one: http://math.about.com/cs/statistics/

Mark Twain once said, "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics." It is extremely easy to mislead, intentionally or otherwise, with a misplaced statistic.|||Thanks All. I'll check it on google.

Regards.