Viewing data differently

[Neo]

I was thinking of creating a web interface where team members could fill up their weekly reports online (instead of the individual by-mail submissions).
I could store this data in a database and then the whoever is interested could have a look at the data in whatever form they want. This would be a lot better than the "mail" method and it would help different views of the same data.
I was wondering if this data from the database could be used to create spreadsheets/reports customized to fit different peoples views.
If I were to use MS-SQL would that help in easily creating those docs in MS-Excel/ MS-Word formats?
Even if you have some general comments on this please let me know.

[AR]

I have no experience in this but anyway...

MS-SQL Server shouldn't make it any easier/harder, it only maintains the database. You can use Access to generate reports, I don't remember if you export reports to Word, you should be able to. You can use COM Automation to create a program that opens word/excel in the background and generates the document/spreadsheet if you want, this is even possible with scripting in the webpage:

Code: Select all

<script language="VBScript">
Set Word = CreateObject("Word.Application")
Word.Visible = True
</script>

(Naturally only works in Internet Explorer)

[Neo]

Hmm... never knew you could do that.
I should try that out sometime soon and see how it goes.

[Solar]

Note that you can use Access to generate reports on any ODBC data source AFAICR, basically making this independent of the database used.