Lifecycle report
Before I spend a few hundred hours working on a report I wanted to get some feedback to determine if SSRS can do what I want to accomplish.
I have a database that stores data about product lifecycles. The database stores a variety of stages that a product may be in the form "Product Name: Stage Description: start date: end date".
When I query the database the data comes back with one row per stage, so if a product has 4 stages (example: planned, Production, Retire, Remove) I get 4 rows of data. This is the first problem that can probably be solved in SQL by concatenating all stages into a single row.
The data needs to be displayed horizontally plotted against a time scale (in years and quarters) with different colors to represent each stage using the associated start and end date for each stage. In addition, there are special conditions where we may pay extended support for a product that has gone "end of life" from a manufacturer. I would like to indicate where this occurs with a symbol (like a $ sign).
If SSRS cannot do this I would be interested in other suggested products.
Comments, opinions and suggestions appreciated.
[Lifecycle Report]
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I'm relatively new to Access and VBA but I have managed to get some basic VBA tricks working in both Access and Excel. Now I've got a challenge that I can't seem to crack. I'm building a database to track maintenance of a small trucking fleet. I've got most of the tables and forms I need to do the basic tracking and management of equipment and maintenance in place.
One of the things we're tracking is called PM's which stands for preventative maintenance (lube jobs and oil changes). We do those on calendar intervals for trailers and mileage intervals for tractors. Right now, I'm trying to get the calendar tracked equipment working. I've a table called tblEquipmentMaster which is where all the specifics for each piece of equipment is kept (make, model, year, VIN, etc) and that table has a field called LastPMDate. All the maintenance records go in two other tables, tblMaintenance which records the unit number, vendor, invoice date and invoice amount and tblMaintenanceDetails which records the each line item of work that was performed on the unit (i.e. replaced water pump, replaced headlight etc).
The maintenance details table also contains a drop down list of standard maintenance codes to allow for easier searching of certain maintenance items later. One of those codes is PM. I also have several forms built to interact with these tables including a data entry form for adding new maintenance records.
What I'm trying to accomplish is to have the LastPMDate field for any unit number in tblEquipmentMaster automatically update to match the InvoiceDate field in tblMaintenance anytime an invoice is entered for that unit number which has a line item containing the code PM.
I've tried building an update query to do this but in addition to changing the LastPMDate field like I want it to, it also ends up changing the invoice dates for all previous PM invoices to the date of the last invoice which contained a PM. Not good.
So my question is, would an update query be the best way to do this or would I be better off with some sort of VBA solution? I have an add record button on my maintenance invoice data entry form which users use as a save record/clear form button when all the info for an invoice has been entered. I'm thinking some VBA code tied to the on_click of that button which would look at the invoice you just added, determine if it contains the PM maintenance code, then update LastPMDate field for that unit number with invoice date from that invoice would be a good way to do it but I honestly have no idea what functions or methods I'd need to get that to work.
Any insights or suggestions appreciated.
It's very hard to follow the flow of what you are describing, even if I have experience of PM and AM (Autonomous maintenance).
What is lacking is the relations between the three tables.
Nevertheless I prefer VBA solutions (maybe because I started programming when everything had to be written...). With VBA you can finely control your workflow.
If I understood well the 1st table is tblMaintenance in which you have the Invoice data.
Then you should have to scan the tblMaintenanceDetails to find the list of PMs and filter the tblEquipmentMaster with current PM value to update the LastPMDate with the date of the 1st table.
Did I succeed in providing you an idea to solve your problem?
Let me know.
I have a project where establishments are inspected anything from once every 6 months to once every 3 years and the results of the inspection scorecard are recorded as a record in a type 2 slowly changing dimension table [tblInspections], using StartDate and EndDate to cover the period between inspections for which this scorecard is valid. The inspections table is linked to [tblEstablishments] which contains other details about other fixed dimensions such as location and business type.
So currently, we are providing aggregated reports of current situation (where EndDate is null) and also audit reports for the history of any one establishment (On EstablishmentID)
My next task is to provide more detailed analysis reports of trends of the scorecard results and I need to provide historical aggregated results of the situation on the last day of each month.
My problem is that despite knowing exactly what I want, I am now unsure how to get there.
1) Do I start by writing ETL process to build a cube based on all the historical results working out what all the aggregates would have been at the end of each month?
2) Am I then able to just process the current records at the end of each month effectively add a new slice onto the end of an existing cube without reprocessing from scratch? (if so how?)
3) Is there another way of doing this? Does Analysis Services have better ways of dealing with SCDs automatically when determining historical status at any point in time by selecting the correct record from multiple records with start and end date?
Any advice and pointers to tutorials related to this would be much appreciated.
First I think you are going to want to build a new periodic (monthly) snapshot fact table if you are trying to analyze the inspection results across establishments (and other dimensions, like time/date). Then you can build the ETL process to populate this new fact table. Finally, you can model the fact table as a new measure group in a new or existing cube...be sure to pay attention to the aggregation property of the measures in this new measure group...typically you don't want to sum periodic snapshot measures (think about what happens if you sum your bank account balance at the end of each month and look at it by year).
Yes, you will run your ETL at the end of each month which will had more rows to your periodic (monthly) snapshot fact table. Then you can just process the cube and you are all set.
Analysis Services handles SCD2 Dimensions quite well (assuming you are using Surrogate Keys...you are aren't you?). I think the business process that you are trying to model (Inspections)...is what is causing some confusion because it's no longer a dimension in this new analysis, it has become a fact (a periodic snapshot fact)
I'm currently in the process of coding a summary report in Access XP for a client and while for the most part I've gotten 99% of the fields to match correctly with the original report (created in Corel Paradox 4.0), I'm having an issue with a sum field where despite using the same set of data, I'm getting invalid answers.
For example, in one table, the sum of the fee field comes to 9,050 in the Paradox report. In Access, the table containing the data also comes to that same amount. Despite this, when I enter the expression in my Summary report, Access will always display the total as 9,005.
I've been trying to use the NZ function to cancel any nulls, however that hasn't helped. Changing the number format to currency, general, and other formats also hasn't been helping.
Any assistance/insights are greatly appreciated.
EDIT: As requested below are some of the expressions from my Access report. Everything up till now has strictly been Access code, but as I have SQL experience, I am open to implementing that type of code if needed (it actually has been on my mind for a bit)
=nz(Sum([Fee]))
Calculates just the total fees
=nz(Sum([Room & Meals]))+(nz(Sum([Commutter & Meals])))+(nz(Sum([Fee])))
This we use to calculate the grand total. It also comes out identical to the fee total for my dummy data since the first two fields don't have any totals added to them.
Not sure this will help, but you need to break this down to trouble-shoot.
Capture the detail data from this report and compare to the Corel Paradox data. Don't just test the totals. Maybe you can put them in Excel.
Break out the three fields individually and sum those: Sum([Room & Meals, Sum([Commutter & Meals, Sum([Fee]). Don't format. Manually add them together to test.
Are these integers or is there some rounding going on?
Are the text boxes on the report large enough to display the entire number?
1 may show you're comparing apples to oranges.
I'm currently in the process of creating an extensive Access report (~50 calculated fields) for a client and while I've gotten 99% of the report down, I'm having trouble handling the Sum and Count logic on the report.
In a nutshell, the report is intended to list the attendees at an event, tally up the number of attendees at each track/course, and also list any outstanding dues which will be paid at the door. In addition, and this is where I'm having trouble, the report also shows the revenue from each track/course along with a breakdown of the revenue from commuters vs. people staying overnight.
At the moment, all of the formulas follow fairly similar structures so despite having 50 fields, 99% of those are simply adjusting the fields to fit the relevant variables.
For the report now with revenue, my issue is that although I have the fee data specified in the data tables, Microsoft Access keeps zeroing out the calculations rather than displaying the total on the fly.
Here's two of the formals I'm using:
=((Count([W1]))*[Fee Charged W1])
=Sum([Room & Meals])
Earlier today I think I pinpointed the problem to the fact that Microsoft Access is showing the report essentially per individual rather than displaying one report for the entire dataset. I've confirmed this because I manually checked the data and noticed some fields had null values which explained the null tallies.
My question now is whether there is a way to assign a default value for variables in reports so that the report cancels out any invalid data in the database table? I imagine using VBA would help, but I have little experience in that realm.
Thanks very much in advance for any assistance
Just found the solution which was right under my nose the entire time. I just had to configure the fields to use a Running Sum (also called a Cumulative Total).
The answer came right from a page in the Microsoft Office Website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/summing-in-reports-HA001122444.aspx
I've got a list of clients who have certain tasks done on a weekly basis. Currently we use an excel spreadsheet that keeps track of this but I am in the works of automating it. In the process of moving this into our MS Access system, I have created a form that does this for a single day and can display a report that outputs in the manner I want the form to look but I cannot get the form to look like that so the user can see all the days of the week for all the clients at once. I suppose I could do this in a subform per client but it seems a bit messy...
The spreadsheet we currently use has Column headers that state the Date and the rows are sort of grouped up by client that are for the number of times the given action occured, the timestamp of when it happened and other various data that happened on that day.
For the life of me I cannot think of a way to view all the records for that given week, grouped in detail per client all at once on the form. I can think of some ways to do this through VBA with recordsets but would like to know is there is a simpler way to do this that is easier to maintain.
Is there a way to do this with the use of a query and a few small scale tricks that don't involve storing recordsets? Keep in mind that this is for Access 2000, I only wish we would upgrade to '03.
Why not use five subforms? One for today, another for tomorrow, etc for
the next five business days. – Tony Toews Sep 12 at 20:57
That is the answer I've gone with and it works BEAUTIFULLY with the setup we are using. Thanks for the wonderful idea!