Background Single Source is a large-volume provider of dry, refrigerated, frozen, grocery, paper, and chemical products for institutional commissaries, primarily correction institutions. The company processes and ships approximately 250 million pounds of food each year, nationwide, and they do it all with only 22 employees. As a small business with a high volume of orders to process and ship,...

Ad hoc queries and reports are the bane of many IT departments. The need to churn out frequent, one-off, "must have" data queries for users can be a significant drain on developers' time. Users can't be blamed for the numerous impromptu requests. Customer service, continuous improvement, and the maintenance of competitive advantage demand that business people regularly look at data in innovative...