Reports on the Web

Abstract

The Internet is one of the greatest mediums for making reports available to a wide audience. In fact, given that there are many more users who wish to run an application’s reports than need to run the application itself, making the reports Web-based can extend your audience without granting access to the application itself. By doing so, the application’s report menu can simply link to the Web pages containing the criteria screens that drive the reports themselves. This all depends, of course, on your authentication method. In a secure system, you have to be authenticated before you can enter another system. If you are running a client application, you may have to take extra steps to link to the reports. This way, those users who only need to run the reports can simply have Web link shortcuts installed on their desktops.