university of wales swansea voyager web reporting andrew brown university of wales swansea

University of Wales Swansea

Voyager Web Reporting

Andrew BrownUniversity of Wales Swansea


Aims and Objectives

• Aim– To encourage Voyager users to setup and run

web-based reporting in their organisation

• Objectives– Know the benefits of web-based reporting – Know what is required to setup web reporting– Know the process involved in setting up web

reporting


Session Outline

• Why use web-based reporting?

• Putting it together

• Demo


Benefits of web-based reporting?


Benefits of web based reporting?

• Improves access to report writers/creators– Potential to split SQL work/report formatting

• Improves access for report customers/users– Can run their own reports– Standard format of reports

• Increasing cost effectiveness of reporting– Separation of production roles and training needs– Quicker creation of new reports– Low maintenance


Putting it together – preface

• University of Wales Swansea– 15000 students / 3000 staff– South Wales

• Library and Information Services– Manage library, IT and

telephony across the university (1997 merger)

– 100 staff & six libraries– £4m (€5.7m) annual

budget

• Information Systems– 1.5 staff manage Voyager,

LinkFinderPlus and digital resources

– 450,000 bib records– Voyager budget

£40K(€57K)• Voyager maintenance

• Authority and bibliographic records purchase

• Projects (e.g. reporting)

• Essential trips to places like Helsinki…


Putting it together – history

• Voyager implementation (Sept 1999)• Experimental web work and simple Access

reports (Late 1999)• Access reporting course (Early 2000)

– Improved Access reporting

• Reporting review (May 2001)– Two staff with SQL and MS Access experience and

Oracle drivers installed– Results of experimental web reporting– Small collection of MS Access reports


Putting it together – problems

• Plenty of other things to do ;-)

• All MS Access queries required individual packaging into user friendly reports

• Experimental web reports – worked but not easily replicated by others

• Other interested staff but required training and support


Putting it together – possibilities

• Features– Easier to author

reports– Easier to run reports– Cost effective– Minimise post report

processing

• Resources– No extra staff– Small budget (≈£1K)

• Solutions (Aug 2001)– Commercial package

• E.g. Business Objects

– Perl– Active Server Pages– ColdFusion 5.0


Putting it together – proposal


Putting it together – procedure

• Server hardware– Test server

• PII 450MHz• 512MB RAM• Cost – free!

• Server software– Windows 2000

Professional (patched!!)

– IIS 5.0 (patched!!)– Norton Anti-virus

(managed)– Oracle ODBC drivers– ColdFusion 5.0

(patched)



• Report writer/creator client hardware– PIII 850Mhz– 256MB RAM– No additional cost!

• Report writer/creator client software– Windows 2000– Dreamweaver

UltraDev 4.0– MS Access 2000– Oracle ODBC drivers



• Report customer/user client hardware– Anything…

…in theory!

• Report customer/user client software– Operating system– Web browser


Putting it together – post test

• Testing results

• Upgrades

• Staff training

• Offline reporting

• Report conversion



• Writing a report


Wrapping up + demo


Any questions?


Any answers?

university of wales swansea voyager web reporting andrew brown university of wales swansea

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