DB2 9 with Microsoft Access 2007 (iii)

In the first part of this series, DB2 9 and Microsoft Access 2007 (a): Getting data, I showed you how to use Microsoft Access 2007 as a graphical front-end processor for a back-end IBM DB2 server. In particular, it describes how to execute linked tables and create extraction layers based on those tables, so that information technicians can deal directly with their business entities without having to worry about different naming conventions, where data is stored on DB2 servers and has virtually no impact on productivity. In the second section how to work with DB2 data in Microsoft Access 2007, I showed you how to affect your Access 2007 and DB2 as a consolidation layer in a step closer to linking tables; I also demonstrated some of the business rules that Access 2007 supports when presenting DB2 data to an information technician. In this article, I'll explain how to build a report based on a DB2 server and further discuss the transparent properties of a backend DB2 server for Access 2007 developers.

Preparatory work

Please confirm that you have connected the org, EMPLOYEE, STAFF, DEPT, and INVENTORY tables in the sample database mentioned in the first two sections. In addition, I assume that you have created the extraction layer based on these tables, so your current all tables should look like this:

If you need guidance on your previous work, see the first part of this series of articles. In this article, we'll process the staff table, so make sure you can open the table and observe the data. You can double-click the staff object you created, and follow the steps in the previous article:

Use the Report Wizard to create DB2 based reports

To create a report of a staff table in the DB2 database, follow these steps:

1. Select the staff table in the All Tables view.

2. In the reports (report) Operation area, select Create Bar and click Wizard. (Note that the display of the action area is dynamic, and it displays the corresponding object list as you choose a different column):

The wizard will be opened: