There are several reasons why the Application Developer introduces the Application Owner to Do It Yourself, DIY, reporting.

• Transparency - A report IS the short letter and is the Decision Makers eyes on/to the data. Some detail deemed to be TOO hard by some is passed-on.

• The great challenge is the iterative interaction between the Report Owner, the Report Audience and the Report Writer to enable Best practices of Report Service Delivery. A report should be delivered in less than 7 interactions and preferably 3 or less.

• It is the responsibility of the Business to run the Business while Technical Service provide support services. While DIY Business reporting has many costing upsides, many Power Users have found too much time can be spent on distracting technical issues.

• Compliance - There are three basic rules for Report Delivery & Maintenance: Quality Testing, Quality Testing & Quality Testing

• Reporting Maintenance Engineering Service is the 3% BIT (sharp, balanced, blunt | Top Quality, Quality, Ordinary) between the Business and IT where you are only as good as your last report

• Picture Book Dashboards with Adobe Bookmarks and Check Digits for Triangulations and Pre-Compliance

• Security is managed by IT

While Crystal Reports retains the larger part of the Reporting pie, Microsoft's SSRS2008 onwards provides a viable alternative. CR generates the required SQL and provides SQL Command tables for data extraction thus retaining a closer bias with the Business Power User who also has SQL skills. Microsoft's SSRS is more 'clunky' and SQL skills are esential.

SSRS is provided with the SQL Server at no extra charge along with all the emailing and other WWW publishing push | pull tools. CR requires the CR Server and licencing requirements to provide Web publishing while 3rd party processes do provide alternatives.

For the small to medium business ALL Business Intelligence can be provided using SQL driven metadata. MDX Cubes along with related quality of published data issues can be bypassed. CUBES were invented in the 1990s to enable Analysts to research and mine large volumes of data quickly and provide alternate positioins to the Business. However Business Management should know what metrics best to make informed decisions at the outset and parameter driven reports using SQL stored procedures or from datamart reporting tables can provide focussed and analytic Decision Support Services reports.

Some number of iterations between the Business and the technical Developer & In-house Testing Group will enable a Quality delivery with the great challenge of "Less is More".

MS SSRS requires SQL skills. CR is an SQL generator. For some CR Business Developers, table linkages suffice for the gathering of data for the report. Others will find the need for some SQL services e.g. a stored procedure or a CR Command as a bolt-on data collector. A stored procedure can provide necessary ETL (Extraction of data from tables or other databases, Translation of the data where necessary and Loading the data into the stored procedure results set or a datamart table) services.