I’m sorry for not posting for so long. I’ve been buried in work.
Today is a short post because I’m getting a bit frustrated with something with regards to Deltek Vision.
Do you remember the term “Desktop Publishing”?
Desktop Publishing became very popular in the 90’s when CEO’s were putting PC’s and Macs with Pagemaker and telling their secretaries to do their graphic design.
This was due to the misconception that given the right tools, almost anyone can do the job.
It seems that there is a similar misconception with custom reporting and Deltek Vision.
No matter what anyone tells you… here is the blunt truth:
1. You have to be a programmer/developer to be able to create good custom reports. SSRS is a reporting framework and an IDE. If you don’t know what an IDE is, you really have no business tackling the task. Just knowing that custom reports are “in the RDL file” isn’t going to get you or any other consultant far at all.
2. Even if someone has the qualifications of a programmer or developer, it does not mean they will be able to develop custom reports against a Deltek Vision database. It takes at least a good understanding of general accounting principals as well as a deep understanding of how the data works within the database to both create reports from scratch and/or modify existing reports from the standard set. In fact, despite what anyone may have told you about simply “taking an existing report and modifying it a little bit to add a column here or change a sorting option there”… it is not a simple task at all.
3. SQL – which stands for “structured query language” is a programming language complete with logical structures, variables, objects in the form of views, functions, stored procedures etc… if those technical terms are over someone’s head, it will take more than just a few weeks, a few months or even a few years to become proficient at database architecture, SQL programming, extracting data… or writing custom reports against any database let alone Deltek Vision.
So the next time you want to get some custom reporting done, talk to a real professional.
For all you consulting firms out there who are trying to provide custom reporting services to your customers that have Deltek Vision 6.x installed, find staff members who have the required skill set so you can give your customers good service.
Cheers!!!!