Generating Reports from Access and Excel Files?

casals asks: "I'm a computer engineer working at a non-IT company, and there's this thing bothering me: by the end of each job, we have to generate a huge report that's actually a composite of lots of minor reports, each one of them made using a different software. Since the softwares used don't interact at all, we have to input the same information five or six times - not too smart, I guess. The outputs are either Access databases or Excel spreadsheets (some of these reports are just Excel spreadsheets that must be filled with data); so, I was thinking about making an application that could aggregate all the input models and generate all the outputs I need, at once. Any suggestions?"

"Here's the thing: it cannot be a web-based application (connectivity is a luxury at the rig), it has to run in a laptop (each employee should have it installed, stand-alone) and it must be able to import images from Excel worksheets. Crystal Reports uses spreadsheets as data sources, but it's not Open Source; I was thinking about using BIRT or JasperReports + POI, but that looks to me like inventing the wheel itself, so I decided to ask before digging into it."

Re:dayjobmode

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Yes, .NET could do this well. ADO.NET can accept Excel and Access files as data sources. 2005 versions ship with a nice little reporting component (based on same technology as SQL Reporting Services). All that can be free with the Express verions (I'm pretty sure the Express versions ship with the reporting components, but not sure you'd have to verify that).

Though I never really use them (do more big projects where I prefer custom business objects for the most part) this sounds like a great little app for using .NET datasets. Use ADO.NET to populate the datasets (just a few lines of code) then build the relationships between your datasets and BAM you've basically got a little in-memory relational database consisting of data from your multiple misc data sources (be they Excel, Access, or whatever). You can then use this data to get what you need and display via databinding to grids, feeding the reporting component, or whatever makes the most sense to you.

Re:Access?

[snuf23]

Access can import Excel documents as tables or just link to the Excel files. I have found that oddly enough the datatypes between the two do not always directly match. The biggest issue I've had is with data truncation moving Excel files to Access. Excel's text data type can contain more than 255 characters whereas Access cannot. You need to map text to the memo data type in Access.

Don't fart about........ Do it properly

[SomethingOrOther]

This prolly isn't what you want to hear but....
Sounds like a situation I was in. I needed to come up with a long term robust solution for my company for the type of situation you are describing

If it's worth doing then its worth doing properly. Dont fart about with hacks here and there. You need to get everything centralised on a SQL/Oracle etc server, getting rid of the shitty legacy Access databases etc written as a temp bodge by an intern 5years ago.... stuff that has now become mission critical. Get the suits to contract out the work if need be.

Before you complain this isn't what you are pitching for, lets talk monney (suits like the bottom line).
1) How much is it currently costing to type and process data six times (not taking into account the 'chinese whisper' effect and errors creaping in)
2) How can your auditors trace the current mess and find where the monney is going?
3) How future proof is your current setup? What will upgrading the current mess cost?
4) What accounting errors already exist in the current setup (no doubt written by non-profesionals)? 5) What backup/recovery policy do you have for your existing mess (none?) and how much will it cost when (not if) Freds hard drive dies?

Pitch the above points to your boss/suits and they will soon realise they need to do it properly and spend some monney. Of course, your situation may vary

FWIW, I completely moved our company away from the legacy ad-hoc crap and am processing everything with a centralisedd LAMP stack. But what else wold you expect to hear on slashdot :-)

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and the blame :-)