This was a
time-consuming, tedious, and boring task that was highly error prone: as a result,
it required longer validation time. Of course, due to the setup, the scripts were
considered part of the Database Administrators' and the system developers' tasks;
so we didn't have access to change anything in the event of an issue. If a query was
returning funny results in the reports, too bad, because all we saw was an output
page with no access to the code that generated it.
Now it's the middle of the night, we're tired, the other guy is griping about having
to pick up the slack while I am doing the most tedious task of running the report.
It's hot! I'm going through hundreds of pages of numbers, cutting out duplicates,
changing summary numbers to reflect correct counts, and changing the formatting.
I am sitting here asking myself the same question I ask myself each week when we
run these reports: "Isn't there a better way?" This will become a question that always
nags at the back of my mind, and it is one that I will always come back to as an
unresolved question.
Fast-forward a few years. I have since moved on from BATC into a new role as senior
software developer, for Citibank North America's National Training Department. It's
the 2004 Actuate Users Conference in Los Angeles, California. Always on the prowl
for innovative reporting technologies because of my encounters at BATC, I came to
the conference to learn about the different products that Actuate had to offer.
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