Steve Turner
sturner at mseco.com
Tue Apr 6 09:07:20 CDT 2010
Brad, You certainly can use Access reports to get what you want from SQL. SQL has rights to keep you from modifying the tables. But it would be good if someone you could trust and understands the query building process has access to the data. We have a custom timesheet program written and modified over several years which we use to keep time on Jobs for billing purposes. Access is the report writer we use to print all management reports and invoices for billing clients. Build the right query for the data and design a simple report in Access or a complicated one and print it out. Our accounting system has Crystal Reports as the report engine and I find it easier to build reports in Access. I can modify Crystal prewritten reports which is a good thing. Access also lets you pull in data from multiple sources thru ODBC and report on it also. As in our billing invoices we pull from SQL and the accounting data for Expenses to Jobs and build an invoice from that data. I am lucky that I have full access to the tables where I can actually edit the table if I find erroneous data that got entered. Granted it is a learning curve. That's why I read most of the emails on this web site. Always looking for an easier way to get things done. These guys and gals are great to help you out. The limitation I find is that Access can have problems with multiple people in the program on the same database so compiled programs with the reports would be best. Steve A. Turner Controller Mid-South Engineering Co. Inc E-Mail: sturner at mseco.com and saturner at mseco.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Brad Marks Sent: Monday, April 05, 2010 7:27 PM To: AccessD at databaseadvisors.com Subject: [AccessD] Using the Report Writer Features of Access 2007 againstSQL Server Database Tables Background - Small company, small IT staff, small budget, no report writer like Crystal Reports, etc. We are thinking about using the report writer built into Access 2007 to create reports from data that lives in SQL Server (purchased application system). We have done a little experimenting and things seems to work nicely in our preliminary tests. Do other firms do this (use Access just for report writing against SQL-server data). Are we missing a big "gotcha"? ~ ~ ~ Is it possible to force "Read Only" access in the Connection String? We want to ensure that no one ever updates any of the data in the SQL Server tables. Thanks, Brad -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com