At some point you need the Oracle Guys!
At some point you need the Oracle Guys!
Use MS Access for what it does well, but always remember that the real database is Oracle based. That means you have the very best relational database and some very powerful tools available to feed your MS Access or Office applications.
Feed How?
You might think that a report or text file extract is all you can reasonably get from your Oracle programmers, but that is only the beginning.
The fastest way to generate
a flattened version of Banner is to create new Oracle Tables.
And any table in Oracle can be available to you via ODBC.
There are also Oracle Views and Functions that can present a dynamic view of Banner. Again, very available to MS Access.
If you have a troublesome MS Access Query, present the task to your Oracle staff. They will find your MS Access Queries to be most helpful in designing an Oracle solution.
What they generally cannot do is give you a report as presentable as one you can get from MS Access or Excel. So get the data with Oracle and Report with MS Office.
Just things to consider:
Most Banner Reports can be set up to run unattended (including providing the runtime parameters)
An extract from the Server can have the same format as a .txt or .csv file. The difference is that Excel can open the .csv file with a double-click vs. an Import for the .txt file.
Scheduling Jobs, changing file names, copying files to other computers, sending email reports, encrypting files, making decisions (yes they can) are all normal tasks performed with Servers.
Approval Notices email (password required, request from bknox@uaex.edu)
Direct Deposit email (password required, request from bknox@uaex.edu)
PO Scripts (password required, request from bknox@uaex.edu)
openMosix, an Open Source Linux Clustering project to which I contribute Website and PR work.
Using SQL*Plus for Banner Reporting
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University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service and Bruce Knox for any
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