Dynamic Data Extract Tools

Question

I've been searching around for a few weeks now for a tool that either is fully built or a direction of something I could build for dynamically extracting data via a web interface. Basically, what I'm looking for is a way to give users a list of all available data objects from our database and then let them pick ones from the list they'd like to view and set parameters then export the results to an excel file.

Right now we're doing it purely with SQL statements but we have hundreds of objects so as you might imagine, those statements are really complex and prone to errors. It would be great if there was a tool available to do this or if someone had an idea of an easy way to organize this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

We've looked at BI tools like QlikView and Tableau but that is probably overkill for what we're trying to do. The open-source BI tools we've looked at seemed really primitive in their functionality. The other thing we looked at was MSAS (our DB is SQL Server) but I'd prefer something that was more database-agnostic and lived on a web server instead of on the database.

Answer 1

I think what you are describing is a typical BI reporting tool. I don't know what open-source BI tools you have been looking at but there are open source solutions which aren't "primitive" at all. The two main open-source reporting libraries are JasperReports and BIRT. You can design report templates within a graphical interface (NetBeans plugin called iReport for Jasper, Eclipse plugin for BIRT). A simple report template is basically an xml file which contains a parameterized SQL query and describes how to display the query results.

End-user typically connect to a web application (Java EE app which uses the reporting library) which executes the report templates : it asks the user to input parameters in a graphical way such as drop-down lists and checkboxes, and then retrieves the SQL query results from the database, and displays them according to the template (tables, charts, etc.). These results can then be exported in many formats including xls.

JasperReports developers provide a free open-source webapp designed to run Jasper reports, called JasperReports Server. Other open-source projects let you execute reports designed either with BIRT or Jasper, for instance ReportsServer which I haven't tested.

At my company we use SpagoBI, which is a fully-fledged free and open source Business Intelligence suite. This means that it has all the features of a commercial BI suite. The most useful is probably the ad-hoc query editor, which lets users with little technical knowledge design simple queries by dragging and dropping fields, and it performs the underlying table joins for them. It then lets users design simple reports such as pie charts or line charts from the data they just extracted. This sort of feature is part of the commercial editions of JasperReports Server and Actuate One (the BIRT equivalent of JasperReports Server which doesn't have a free version).

SpagoBI is a great, powerful tool and I recommend it, but it is also quite difficult to configure and to master. Maybe if your needs are only to execute pre-defined reports you had better go with one of the other solutions.

Answer 2

PowerPivot, Data Explorer, or Microsoft Query?

Sorry, didnt see that you wanted a web interface...

Answer 3

You can try get some export data functions from SQL Web Data Administrator - http://sqlwebadmin.codeplex.com/

Or you can install the web tool but restrict access for its web-page other then export data pages.

Answer 4

Cognos BI (specifically, the web-based Query Studio) fits this tab perfectly and is a great tool to deploy to non-technical web users.

It does require a pretty robust setup and is not cheap but it is an enterprise-class product. I've only worked with the full-scale deployment but they also have an Express product for small/midsize companies.

If you could clarify number of users, database size, expected query volume, and budget, we could refine the toolset further...