Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
select the type of report appropriate for the business need, understand
the mental models of the user, and manage outbound communications.
This is not easy. A good report should be able to communicate the required
information to the intended audience in a relatively short period of time.
Because reports are used to get the pulse of the business, the set of
reports that come out of an application should reflect Maslow's Hierarchy
— with reports that map to the needs as expressed in this hierarchy at
various levels.
Queries come into a more natural category of data retrieval. They need
to be treated as different from reports. Attempts to give self-querying
facilities to managers have failed because generating a good query requires
a deep understanding of the data models underlying the application.
