It is not that hard

[howardh8780]

I have been working with databases all my life. I now make a living from it. One of my customers called me a "data jockey". I like that. I use Crystal Reports to extract meaning from data. It is relatively easy to use and is focused on us analysts not programmers.

If you have trouble understanding the structure of a database look at each table within it and complete the following sentence:

"There is one record for each...."

You might finish it with one word, such as "project". Or you might have to use a phase such as "project/employee/expense combination". You will find that tables are linked in one of two ways: There are one-to-many relationships and one-to-one relationships. In either case you can have equal joins, left outer joins and right outer joins. This yields six combinations that you will need to deal with.