Hi. - My company is using a 3rd party, proprietary data system which has limited canned reports. There are many mgt. and administrative types who, understandably, wish to create their own ad hoc reports. They are not techies, but some know MS Access basics.

The question is should they be attempting to learn SQL or Crystal Reports for their purpose? They are looking to be trained in either, although they would be probably seeking a short term course. (Spread over days as opposed to daily for weeks or daily for months) And is this even practical considering the stated time commitments?

Russ

You have given us very little information, so you'll probably get pretty rough answers in response.

Based on your description it sounds like you have a middle sized professional organization. They need reports that are iron clad correct (no missing or extraneous data), and probably need to have those reports "presentation ready" for clients.

If these assumptions are correct, trying to train your professionals is probably not a good idea because they want to focus on their professional issues and not on data integrity and presentation (even though they want those too), so your best answer is to hire people to do the reports for you. This does cost money, but consider the cost of "errors and omissions" and I'd bet that my suggestion will suddenly make more sense. A reporting professional will get the data right, and the presentation acceptable for a small fraction of what it costs to train and pay a staff of professionals to do the same reporting tasks.

-PatP