Dear all in the beginning of 2006 we will start to work with Navision 3.70.B. At present I’m trying to get firm with the reporting opportunities. It is quite nice to create my own reports. But there are two points I don’t like: - It takes a lot of time to make such a report good looking even if I want a quick info only for one time. - It seems to be tricky to use several formulae in such a report. That’s why I am missing a possibility to get the report into Excel. Another point is that most of the recipients want to get the reports in Excel to play with the items. With our current program (Sage KHK) I copy the tables into Access, create a query, copy it into Excel and finish it. How can I do this with Navision? We bought ODBC for Navision, but the NSC sayd it slows the system very much. Is this right? Is it meaningful to export the relvant tables once per day via ODBC into Access and work with them there? Or does anyone use another way to get reports into Excel? Thanks in advance Ulf
Hi Ulf, This subject is often discussed on this forum. You will find some answers if you use the search-functionality; search for “excel report” and use “Search in” “Subject only”. Or you could use different searchterms next to “excel”.
Hi Tino and all, now I read quite much about the export to excel and find it quite difficult. So let’s get back to my questions about ODBC: Is it slow to get data via ODBC into Access? (We are using native database.) Is it better to link the tables or to copy them? TIA Ulf
i personally do not find c/odbc so slow that it is an issue. We use Crystal Reports & c/odbc without any problems. speed also has to do with the size of your database, # of users & hardware. there are other ways than using coding like www.businessobjects.com www.printtoexcel.com www.jetreports.com to help you with reporting if you do not find Navision Reports easy to create.
HI Ulf, firstly ODBC either your NSC told you wrong, or there was a misunderstnding. Using ODBC will NOT slow Navision down. What they meant to say was that reports written using the ODBC interface are going to be slower than Navision C/SIDE reports, there are a number of reasons, but basically because of the use of flow fields. Fromthe basis of your posting, I would suggest that your best solution is to go with a SQL back end. Though if doing so, I would use the 4.1 executables when they come out, since they will implement SQL much better than 3.70. In terms of Excel, Jet reports is a great product, it is a true Navision implementation, its not just some third party product hacked into Navision, they really did a great job. Although it will run reports slower than native C/Side, it is very usable, and much better than Crystal etc, in terms of Navision usability.
Thanks for the Infos. I will once more test the ODBC and have a look at Jet reports. Ulf
Ulf In Access, Link to Navision tables instead of Import. ODBC from Access is not slow at all. We have 200 users on the system and I run all my ‘quickie’ reports and queries via Access. Crystal or MS Query is also not bad at all. Faizel
re: Jet Reports. Performance will depend on what and how much you extract. On one end I have JetReports that run quite reasonably (few minutes), and on the other I have some that run so long and basically make my PC unusable that I go take a long coffee break or go to lunch. This on a PC with a 2.8GHz CPU and 512MB RAM, with nothing else running. Gary
Since in the future Microsoft will be using SQL reporting services as the native reporting, would it not be best to use and learn this now?
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Ulf In Access, Link to Navision tables instead of Import. ODBC from Access is not slow at all. We have 200 users on the system and I run all my ‘quickie’ reports and queries via Access.
Now for test I linked the tables item and item ledger entry into access. I can view the tablesand work with them. But if I try to group or sum in a query, I get the very useful failure “ODBC call failed”. Why? Ulf