quote:

Originally posted by MartinY:
A self service application is like : Info Assist where users normally have access to the master file (or cluster or business views) and are "free" to play with fields, print, sum, join, etc (when no DB security applied).

A guided ad-hoc, will be more "controlled" because you will only give user access to fields that you want (same as accessing a reporting object). You can also control the print, sum, where clause, join, etc; what you're normally don't with self service (except if you've created "controlled" cluster or business view).

quote:

Originally posted by MartinY:
Here is a tutorial on how to built a guided ad-hoc (gah):

Guided Ad-hoc part 1
Guided Ad-hoc part 2

Using this solution, one gah will have to be develop per table but you can add "security" (limit what they see and access: fieds and records) and WHERE clauses without having to include db security feature.

If users wants to be able to access the whole 50 tables as they want with only one application, you probably should go with InfoAssist (IA), have built business views (bv) (or reporting objects (ro)) on each tables and have IA access to these bv/ro only. But you won't be able to limit access without db security: it's gonna be a self service. So users will choose what they want.

Another way to build gah, it's to create them yourself by coding the fex and html, but it's a longer way and cannot be describe here. Similar to above gah but done manually. One advantage of that solution is that Multilanguage can be managed, which is not possible with gah as shown above because it will only kept default language as for field's title.

Using this solution you can create a parameter where first of all, the user will have to select the table he want. Then generates available fields list he can choose from. In other words, build a gah but where the first parameter is the table's name. You can then display fields and WHERE according to that table. It's not going to be simple, but it's feasible.

quote:

Originally posted by MartinY:
So you should build an HTML page (everything can be in one single page) that has a list of area/table to select from that will populate other controls with the list of by/sum/print/filters/etc fields based on selection made from that area/table list.

quote:

Originally posted by RSquared:
Enigma006,

You can create a single Launch Page that allows the users to select the business area / tables they want to report on. Once they select an area you then send them to another HTML page that is more specific to their request. This HTML page can then either send them to another HTML page based on selection , or you can build an HTML page that allows them to create their report. This HTML page can have a group of dropdown lists of fields, filters, comparisons etc