Voyager Web Reporting

1. Voyager Web Reporting Andrew Brown University of Wales Swansea

2. Aims and Objectives • Aim • To encourage Voyager users to setup and run web-based reporting in their organisation • Objectives • Know the benefits of web-based reporting • Know what is required to setup web reporting • Know the process involved in setting up web reporting

3. Session Outline • Why use web-based reporting? • Putting it together • Demo

4. Benefits of web-based reporting?

5. Benefits of web based reporting? • Improves access to report writers/creators • Potential to split SQL work/report formatting • Improves access for report customers/users • Can run their own reports • Standard format of reports • Increasing cost effectiveness of reporting • Separation of production roles and training needs • Quicker creation of new reports • Low maintenance

6. University of Wales Swansea 15000 students / 3000 staff South Wales Library and Information Services Manage library, IT and telephony across the university (1997 merger) 100 staff & six libraries £4m (€5.7m) annual budget Information Systems 1.5 staff manage Voyager, LinkFinderPlus and digital resources 450,000 bib records Voyager budget £40K(€57K) Voyager maintenance Authority and bibliographic records purchase Projects (e.g. reporting) Essential trips to places like Helsinki… Putting it together – preface

7. Putting it together – history • Voyager implementation (Sept 1999) • Experimental web work and simple Access reports (Late 1999) • Access reporting course (Early 2000) • Improved Access reporting • Reporting review (May 2001) • Two staff with SQL and MS Access experience and Oracle drivers installed • Results of experimental web reporting • Small collection of MS Access reports

8. Putting it together – problems • Plenty of other things to do ;-) • All MS Access queries required individual packaging into user friendly reports • Experimental web reports – worked but not easily replicated by others • Other interested staff but required training and support

9. Features Easier to author reports Easier to run reports Cost effective Minimise post report processing Resources No extra staff Small budget (≈£1K) Solutions (Aug 2001) Commercial package E.g. Business Objects Perl Active Server Pages ColdFusion 5.0 Putting it together – possibilities

10. Putting it together – proposal

11. Server hardware Test server PII 450MHz 512MB RAM Cost – free! Server software Windows 2000 Professional (patched!!) IIS 5.0 (patched!!) Norton Anti-virus (managed) Oracle ODBC drivers ColdFusion 5.0 (patched) Putting it together – procedure

12. Report writer/creator client hardware PIII 850Mhz 256MB RAM No additional cost! Report writer/creator client software Windows 2000 Dreamweaver UltraDev 4.0 MS Access 2000 Oracle ODBC drivers Putting it together – procedure

13. Report customer/user client hardware Anything… …in theory! Report customer/user client software Operating system Web browser Putting it together – procedure

14. Putting it together – post test • Testing results • Upgrades • Staff training • Offline reporting • Report conversion

15. Putting it together – procedure • Writing a report

18. Wrapping up + demo

19. Any questions?

20. Any answers?