Best language/tool to use?

[aldi]

OK, I am not a programmer or developer but I find myself in the position of needing to produce a couple of reports from an SQL database. Nothing spectacularly complicated, just monthly billing info, mileage reports that kind of thing. What's the easiest/quickest tool to use for this kind of thing? I'd prefer something that works cross-platform if poss, we've got an internal apache box we could use for webby stuff? Database is Postgresql.

Needs to be fairly easy to pick up. Doesnt have to be mind-blowingly pretty. Think I can handle the SQL, I'm on day 2 of 'SQL in 21 days'

Any pointers?

Cheers!

[m12_nathan]

Shame you're not on MS SQL, the free web based reporting tool is excellent.

Given your requirements I guess you could write something in PHP?

[timsta]

Quickest, easiest & cheapest is PHP.

[zumbruk]

timsta said:

Quickest, easiest & cheapest is PHP.

Quick, and dirty. PHP has some pretty loathsome characteristics if you're a "real" programmer... But if all you want is a quick and dirty solution then PHP's your tool.

[aldi]

Hmm will look at PHP, We do have an MS-SQL box here too so will check to see if the application likes MS-SQL or not..

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

[m12_nathan]

All of the scripting languages I've used are horrible compared with a proper OO langauge I hate procedural code.

[Plotloss]

Crystal Reports is cheap and has a great level of functionality.

[cyberface]

m12_nathan said:

All of the scripting languages I've used are horrible compared with a proper OO langauge I hate procedural code.

Ruby's pretty cool.

[SlidingSideways]

You can set up an ODBC connection (details at www.cs.panam.edu/~dkirtley/database.html) to the Postgre DB. Then you can use Excel, Access etc... to query the database and produce your reports. Might be the quickest way if you're not a coder, but know your way around MS Office?

[mattley]

FileMaker also.

Very underrated, very powerful, very easy to use.

[aldi]

SlidingSideways said:

You can set up an ODBC connection (details at www.cs.panam.edu/~dkirtley/database.html) to the Postgre DB. Then you can use Excel, Access etc... to query the database and produce your reports. Might be the quickest way if you're not a coder, but know your way around MS Office?

Do bears s*** in the woods?