[rt-users] question on reporting

[Jim Meyer]

Hello!

On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 11:52, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 14:22, Todd Chapman wrote:
> > I can understand that, but if you are going to spend time
> > learning something, your time would be better spent 
> > learning perl/RT API than figuring out the schema. Going
> > the perl route will serve you many times over, for many
> > tasks.
> 
> On the other hand, learning SQL is useful for a lot of
> other things too, and you are a lot more likely to find
> pretty reporting tools that work natively with SQL databases
> than anything that works with RT's API. 

My free advice, which is worth exactly what you paid for it:

Using RT's Perl API is an order of magnitude faster and far, far more
safe -- I know the report I wrote for v3.0.1 will work in v3.5.5 (and
most of the stuff I wrote for v2.2 as well). If your knowledge of both
Perl and SQL is sketchy, I'd recommend learning Perl as it's (a) more
utilitarian, and (b) the API will give you data integrity which, unless
you know SQL to reasonable depth, you can't guarantee on your own. Is it
worthwhile to make reports fast if you're not sure they're accurate?

I know both Perl and SQL to reasonable depth. I've got all sorts of SQL
reporting tools handy that I could use if I chose to. I don't choose to.

Cheers!

--j
-- 
Jim Meyer, Geek at Large                                    purp at acm.org