Usable view for dumb users?

Question

I'm working on a small project that requires some of our users to be able to view/sort/filter and generally play around with a large amount of data. It's based on a sql server 2000 view and is something on the order of 125k rows worth of historical event data (think sports).

Normally I would turn to excel for this kind of simple manipulation, but the version of excel we use doesn't support more than 65k rows (2003). I've thought of access, but on the surface the interface seems a bit complicated.

Does anyone know of a good tool to allow these users to quickly perform these kinds of operations?

Answer 1

Create a small windows app, having just 1 gridview on it, with sorting / paging etc. enabled?

Answer 2

what about an intranet site?

Answer 3

Report Builder 2.0 is an easy to use tool for creating reports.

If you install Sql Server Express 2008, you get Reporting Services for free.

This will work till you hit the size limit for Sql Express, I believe 4GB of data.

Answer 4

Take a look at ASP.NET Dynamic Data websites. You should be able to create a basic site in an hour or less. They even look good out of the box.

And your users may be "dumb" but you're working for them!

Answer 5

If you end up doing some sort of website, check out the Google visualization API for some really spiffy graphs and charts.

Answer 6

Honestly, if you're confident you could implement a solution quickly (lets say 1 hour) with excel 2007. Consider that Office 2007 costs ~ $500, and whatever your hourly rate is (lets just say $50 for kicks), then you would need to build something within 10 hours and anything over that you'd be better off going and buying Office 2007.

10 hours, that's less than 2 days of dev time. And the $500 price tag is for a new copy of office, not the upgrade version.

Sounds like it's time to upgrade.

BTW, here are some numbers of Excel 2007 limitations.

Answer 7

A Crystal Report is not bad if you set it up with the right filters, which the users can control.

Then you can either embed in an intranet site (very easy w/visual studio), or let them view it locally with the free viewer.

Answer 8

If you're already using SQL server, try installing SQL server reporting services (SSRS). it allows you to quickly generate reports for your users and publish them on a web interface, or it even has a plugin for the browser called a Report Builder, which allows users to create their own reports. If the users are proficient in excel, then Report Builder would be an easy jump for them to make.