Start-to-Finish Visual Basic 2005: Learn Visual Basic 2005 as You Design and Develop a Complete Application

Chapter 20. Reporting

For the business application developer, reports are a fact of life. You may want to spend your time developing cool user interfaces or figuring out the core algorithms used in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. But instead, you invest many boring hours each week turning out report after report. And these reports take a significant toll on the programming community. In America alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates nearly 850 report-related deaths each year—and that’s doesn’t even count those who read the reports. I once had a customer who printed off 20 copies of a 600-page report every month for his top-level managers. Clearly stupefied by the amount of tree pulp just to generate this report, ...