Report Generator

[atd]

We have a lot of custom reporting needs, but the same few reports are needed frequently with different variables. I have many query favorites setup (my list is getting way too long), but for those common reports I'd like to be able to create some nice looking reports with subtotalling, headers, etc. I'd also like to be able to prompt the users for the variables rather than having them try to edit queries and hope they do it correctly. What usually ends up happening is that I'm asked to pull the data from the queries - but I'd like to give more control to the users to do this on their own and be confident that they're getting the correct results.

To make a long story short...I'm looking for a good report generator that works well with Open Dental and can be accessed by most users without the need for expensive software on every workstation. I can't tell when this page was last updated, but it doesn't appear current to me. http://www.opendental.com/manual/rdlproject.html

Any recommendations? This will be a big project so I want to do it right the first time rather than having to switch to something else later on and recreate everything.

Thanks

[jordansparks]

Pentaho is a popular opensource (free) business intelligence suite. There are a huge number of possible tools. You could do some really nice things with Access, but that requires purchasing a license for each workstation where you want those tools. Access is usually better when just the management needs the reports. You'll be able to set up an ODBC connection on each workstation, so pretty much any reporting tool will work. But tools that support MySQL directly won't require the ODBC connections, saving you that hassle.

[atd]

OK thanks, I'll look into those options. FYI, the ODBC download link on this page is broken http://www.opendental.com/manual/odbc.html.

[BFD676]

Do you know if Open Office's Base would be a usable alternative? And if so, do you have any tips?

Thanks