Best Practices for Reports

There are some good practices to follow when writing reports. It starts back when you created your design. You should be thinking of the reports you want constantly through the design process. You need to design your application to support the reports rather than the reverse. When you build structures and hierarchies, they should support the reports you need. Your totals and subtotals should be parent members in these structures. You want to build calculations in the system that support the reports. Why have the report calculate a simple ratio every time it is run, when you can build that in the database and calculate it one time when you consolidate? Think about it like this: What is easier to pull, one number or two or more numbers, do a calculation, and then have some special formatting? What if you have a hundred reports, and you have to change the ratio in each? It just makes sense to build as much as you can in the database.