Creating and distributing summaries and analyses of everything from raw materials and workflow planning to cash flow and balance sheets is the lifeblood of most businesses. But just being able to generate a report is nowhere near enough - you need to be able to easily change the report which means that IT needs to give end users the tools to create and modify reports as cost-effectively as possible. And with as little IT involvement as is feasible.

But that's not all that's required: there's also the problem of supporting multiple report types, automation, integration with other applications and processes, the need for flexibility in report output file format, and user access control. In short, for enterprise-level reporting to be comprehensive and cost-effective is a serious undertaking.

Two related products that cover all of this territory are Synaptris Reporter and IntelliView both from Synaptris.

These products are report generation and management systems that can access any relational database including Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MS Access, MySQL, and Sybase and integrate with .Net, Java and COM applications to allow users to design interactive and preformatted reports including columnar reports, cross tabs, summary, sub reports, pivot tables, charts, and so on.

Where these products intersect with our interests in the Web applications world is that they support publishing reports to users through Web browsers. Both products provide report generation scheduling and user access security and can generate reports in a variety of formats including PDF, Excel spreadsheet, e-mail, and HTML.

The difference between the products is that Synaptris Reporter is completely server-based with an optional OCX control for Windows to extend the client-side presentation abilities while IntelliView uses the client-side IntelliView Report Analyzer to display and manipulate reports in the company's proprietary format downloaded through a Web browser.

In both products, reports are designed using the IntelliView Designer and then in the case of the IntelliView solution the report definition is passed to the Synaptris SDK. The SDK is a set of lightweight components running on an application server that uses the reports designed in the IntelliView Designer and processes and delivers report requests to and from the client-side IntelliView Report Analyzer (see the IntelliView page for an architectural overview).

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.