Buy or build tool for Data Reporting ?

Question

We have been asked to provide a data reporting solution. The followng are the requirements:

i. The client has a lot of data which is generated everyday as an outcome of the tests they run. These tests are run at several sites and they get automatically backed up into a central server.

ii. They already have perl scripts which post process them and generates excel based reports.

iii. They need a web based interface for comparing those reports and they need to mark and track issues which might be present in those data.

I am confused if we should build our own tool for this or we should go for already exiting tool(any suggestions?). Can you please provide supportive arguments for the decision that you would suggest?

Answer 1

You need to narrow down your requirements (what kind of data needs to be compared, and in which format?). Then check if there is already a software available (commercial or free) that fulfills your needs. Based on that, decide if its better (i.e. cheaper) to implement the functionality yourself, or use the other software.

Don't reinvent the wheel.

There are quite a few tools out there that specialise in this sort of thing, my gut feeling is that you can find something ready made that does what you need.

As a side note, that tool may also be a better solution for creating those excel reports than the perl scripts.