Standard reports

[Bill Snow]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Joel Peshkin wrote:

> No argument about the usefullness of those types of report.  However, 
> getting the data will require you to have a very sophisticated report 
> generator access the underlying schema directly.  All of the information 
> exists, but it is not always in the friendliest form.  For example, time 
> to resolution involves using the date created (from the bug table) and 
> the resolution date (by finding the most recent appropriate entry in the 
> activity log).
>
> Similar complexities abound for the other queries.


High-level reports on transactional data (like bug actions) can get 
complicated enough that eventually you need to have a different schema for 
reporting than you do for transactions (a data warehouse).

I actually implemented such a mapping (from a 2.17 bugzilla database to a 
custom-crafted star schema) so that a client could answer complicated 
questions like: How many bugs are open at the beginning of each week? and 
What's the average duration of bugs by customer?

One interesting thing about star schema is that they can be hooked up to 
'standard' data and reporting tools.  There is an open-source OLAP server 
called Mondrian that could really open up a can of worms.


I'm not suggesting in any way that this is core bugzilla stuff, but there 
may be other people out there that get asked difficult-to-answer questions 
about their bug data.



Bill Snow
Tiny Planet Consulting

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I'm a bugzilla-developers lurker of 6 or 8 months, and web consultant with 
Tiny Planet Consulting in Toronto, Canada.  Tiny Planet offers bugzilla 
customization amongst a wide variety of web-development services.