Crosstab Pivot-table Workbench

(Robyn Page and Phil Factor) There comes a time with many Database Developers charged with doing management reports when the process of doing it properly gets very tedious. By 'doing it properly', I mean the 'best practice' of having to do the basic reporting in SQL and relying on a front-end application to do the presentation. This is particularly true where the management want simple aggregate reports, or 'Pivot-table' reports. Presentation is so closely tied with the data that splitting the process can sometimes lead to more problems than it solves. Of course, we have Reporting Services, Analysis Services and other external tools, but there are times when a simple solution based in TSQL has the upper hand.