[AccessD] Rube Goldberg Would Have Been Proud

All,

I am working on a high-level one-page “Executive” report that pulls data from many data sources in order to provide Key Metrics in one central place.  This report will be automatically generated every night.  Because of the amount of underlying data and because of the number of data sources, it takes about 4-5 minutes to generate the report.  So far, things have worked nicely.  The generated report is going to be automatically e-mailed to key people and it is going to be stored as a PDF file.

During the day, the previously generated PDF file (from the night before) will be visible from an Access application.  This also is working nicely. (1 second response time)

So far, so good.    

Now, there is a need to provide “Links” from the one-page report to detail reports.  This is not a problem if the report is generated and viewed via “Report View” (Access 2007).  This works nicely, except that it takes 4-5 minutes to generate the report.

I am trying to come up with a faster solution.

Here is what I am considering.  After the report is automatically generated at night (in PDF format), I will automatically convert the PDF file into a JPG file.

Then I will use this JPG file as a “Linked Image” in another Access Report.  Next I will add Buttons on top of the Image for the Links to the underlying details.

Has anyone else tried something along these lines?

Is there a better or simpler way to do this?

Thanks,
Brad