I recently had the displeasure of reading a reporting solution proposal made by what is very likely the most unethical, non-technical, uneducated business I’ve ever had to deal with. They were obviously punting their favoured solution, and thus played down the other options in an attempt to win the business. Having dealt a lot with SQL Reporting Services, I was quite angered to read what they had to say about it. Some of the points they made were as follows:
1. The solution envisages a pure thin client except when report needs to be viewed as a PDF
2. There are no success stories available in any enterprise level production environment
3. The technology is similar to that of OLAP cross tabs and this may affect the performance of the Web Server
4. The technology also requires the installation of .NET Framework on the Web Server, which might impact the performance of the Web server
5. The standard application security can not be implemented since the SQL reporting services require a separate security definition
6. SQL Reporting Services does not support XML
This really drives me nuts! How can anyone willingly lie about the functionality inherent in a system like that! I think it's extremely unethical to mislead your client for
any reason whatsoever. To counteract each of the points above:
1. Absolute trash! You can configure the environment as you like it, whether that be "thin client" or not.
2. Trash again... how about these: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/productinfo/casestudies/default.asp
3. You can use OLAP or OLTP as the basis for your reports, and ultimately the performance comes down to how well the queries are written and the maintenance of the database server
4. The client is running Windows Server 2003, which comes with the .NET Framework installed anyway. And please explain how merely having the .NET Framework could affect the performance of the web server enough to include it as a threat. Not to mention that the client has a number of .NET systems currently in place anyway.
5. SQL Reporting Services comes as an extendable platform. You are able to write your own extensions for data processing, security, rendering, and delivery. I've made some of these, and it's a few hours work at MOST. So tell me again... why can't you configure your own security for it???
6. This one was my favourite... I'm not even going to bother countering that point, because it's not even a point! Fools!
These guys have quite clearly never implemented any form of SQL Reporting Services solution EVER... or if they have, they've done a really crappy job of it! What worries me most is that they've blatantly lied about SRS, so what else in their proposal is a lie???
So this should serve as a warning to all non-technical decision makers: Do not assume that the advice you're being given is correct! If it's your job to make the decision, then it's also your job to make sure you're getting the right information. Generally this is done by getting information from more than one source.
But really... this just exposed the lack of ethics in the business world today! Drives me nuts!