7. Why SQL Views & how

SQL Views are the most powerful tool in the fully automated reporting toolbelt.

They allow reporting to;

• Avoid growing maintenance in lots of single reports by not implementing business logic in Excel and/or Power BI and/or Google Sheets, but rather at the database layer

• Simplify maintenance by having one place where logic and joins live

• Get it right once, and be shared by multiple reporting tools

• Performance, performance, performance. If Power BI is doing the relationship modelling your reports will be slow and error prone. We also add Indexes at the database level as we know what queries will be running

• Enabling non-technical reporting users to create reports, by only showing them the tables and columns they need and vastly simplifying the relationships at the database layer, instead of the reporting layer.

We fully appreciate this is very technical for our usual client base, however, getting this key factor across is hugely important in understanding that reporting can be done badly, but it can also be done very very well. And SQL Views are very important in scalable, maintanable, error free reporting!