Intranet Shuffle
Give Your Team Direct Access to Corporate Data
By Brian Jepson
Today's data-intensive sites have moved far beyond the simple "brochureware" that once dominated the Web. Intranets, in particular, have grown in complexity, as organizations are now transferring more and more of their historically paper-based tasks to online applications.
Employee information, HR procedures, collaboration tools, technical manuals, customer relationship management—these are just a few examples of the applications that are commonly deployed on intranets. When you start to add up the list, even a small business' intranet can easily grow to encompass large volumes of information.
The issue that inevitably arises is how to allow your users efficient access to that information. As a site grows, traditional navigation schemes can become cumbersome. Many layers of menus can be time-consuming, and without a meticulously planned architecture, your employees can wander off course. More often, users may want to access information in unforeseen ways, and may become frustrated by the limitations of your existing browser-based applications.
Open Up Your Data
The last thing you want is an intranet that discourages its potential audience. One possible solution is to give your intranet users some extra flexibility in the way they access your database—by way of the infamous ad hoc query.
Ad hoc query mechanisms are so called because they bypass traditional forms-based interfaces and let users access database tables in a more free-form manner, much as a database administrator would.
