Pivot data

I’m busily working on getting some moderately rich data for the Thursday pivot table session. I already have the data, its just a case of cleaning any potentially identifying info out of it.

Anyway I got an email from a fellow Eusprigger who had heard I was doing a pivot table slot and can he have my data, as his examples are ‘boring’. Well I’m not sure my data is that exciting but I do believe it has enough to demonstrate some of the exciting features of pivot tables.

I think its easier to see the value pivot tables can bring once you have seen them in action on your own data, or producing your own reports. Certainly when I have built them for clients, they seem to need little further persuasion of the value.

The biggest win is when you need multiple reports off the same basic data. A classic example would be reporting monthly, quarterly, and annually (calender year and/or financial year). With pivot tables reliable, robust reports take seconds including testing.

When quoting clients for work, if its going to be pivot table based I rarely budget more than a day or so for reporting. If its not pivots the estimate could be several weeks.

I’ll make the slides, workbooks, databases and code available after the session for anyone to download from the either here or the Codematic website, or both. If you want the chat that goes with, you’ll have to come along on Thursday.

cheers

Simon