Nari Kannan: Why is Business Reporting So frustrating?
Nari Kannan from Ajira Technologies has written an interesting piece on the frustration of business users when it comes to reporting.
I can’t agree more and I think the operational users share the same frustrations.
First, in order to extract value out of the log ocean requires the operational users to find out whether the data they are looking for are even in the logs. One example is that many times the system administrators are looking for what files the users have touched on their system. Well, guess what, that information isn’t available on most standard operating systems!! There are exceptions obviously. Windows, when full audit is turned on, gives the administrators some information. And you can install additional tools on UNIX/Linux systems to gather that type of information. But most of the time, that information is just not there!
Secondly, assuming that the data is available, most log analysis products don’t provide the right reports for the administrators. Most of the time these products provide you a framework in which you can build your reports, but not the reports themselves. Some vendors include some basic reports, but most of the time they are just not enough.
Lastly, the report building interface in most products are on one of the two extremes. Either they are too user friendly and don’t give the administrator the flexibility to perform complex queries, or they are too complicated to use and require the users to know how to program. Neither are sufficient for organizations that are short staffed.
So vendors, please listen to your customers and give them the solution they need, not just the technologies for them to build their own.