Automation: Which program? What books? What code?

[PSUBrian]

Hey everyone,

I'm a Co-op at the company I work for. I'm looking to automate a good number of their reports. Eventually I'd like to be able to pull data from their servers, automatically generate a report using excel or access, then automatically send it out to others at given times. Few questions:

Should I be using Excel or Access for this? Is one more flexible concerning automation than the other?

What computer languages should I learn to help me achieve this? (I've had experience with 2 languages, so I'm pretty confident I can learn whatever I must).

Can you recommend any websites/books to help me with this task.

Thanks for all you help AGAIN!

 

[SydneyGeek]

This sounds like a big project. A couple of thoughts:

If the reports involve a lot of grouping / filtering / sorting, possibly with sub-reports to display related data, Access is your tool of choice -- especially if you will be working with >65K records

If the reporting is primarily number-crunching and charting, and/or uses pivot tables, use Excel.

If it's a lot of number crunching AND you have >65K records, some combination may be the way to go.

Also, you may find Crystal Reports to be useful.

Denis

 

[PSUBrian]

I don't believe we'll have anywhere near 65,000 records. Which program do you think interfaces with SAP better (SAP is a popular Supply Chain Information program)? Is anyone familiar with combining the capabilities of SAP and Microsoft Office?

I hope to pull data from SAP (and other similar databases).

Thanks for the help so far.

 

[SydneyGeek]

Both Excel and Access can pull data from SAP, using ODBC. It sounds like your choice comes down to:
1. How complex the reports need to be
2. How much number crunching and ad-hoc analysis you want to do
3. Your degree of familiarity with the two apps.

There's a book called Integrating Excel and Access (or is it Integrating Access and Excel?), published by O'Reilly. I think the author is Michael Schmalz.

Basically, you can use code to pull data from any source that understands ODBC and for which you have the driver. You will need to check your system to see if you have the SAP driver(s) installed.

Denis

 

[PSUBrian]

Does this book show how to integrate these two programs with ODBC, if not can you recommend another as well. Either way, I'm going to head to Barnes and Nobles tonight and try to pick it up. Thanks for your help.