How do you peer review SRSS reports?

Question

I'm a big fan of peer review of code but when it comes to reports there just doesn't seem like a good way reviewing them. Showing differences just gets you the XML which isn't very readable and opening the report doesn't get you that much more visibility. Are there any applications that make this easier or do most people just review reports on the output side? How do you do peer review of reports?

Answer 1

You aren't reviewing internal code behind a web page or an application: you're reviewing a markup language that controls what the user sees

Because of this, I make sure the users are involved in the development and testing. They are the peers, effectively.

I feel that reports are subjective (right word?) to users, and this is one area where IT folk think differently. Especially because there are no whizzy techniques or patterns or methodologies...

Answer 2

We tend to split the reports into the SQL, which is subject to a straight forward peer review by other developers; and the report itself, for which we have a short checklist of best practices/style guides that we usually check off ourselves.

We try and get users involved in testing as early as possible, especially in a complicated report, even to the point of actually laying out the report with them sitting with us - this saves a huge amount of time in formal acceptance testing and re-development later on.