Why limit the fields to include when building a report? Most of them can be hidden anyway, right? So why not just bring them all in?
Obviously, your selection of fields determines the data that will be available in the reports you generate from the template you select. The more fields you include, the more flexible will be the reports you create. However, pulling more fields also requires more system memory, so if you have a large database you should select your fields carefully, with both eventual usage and system limitations in mind.
Because you can include fields just by checking them “on” in the list box, this is the easiest time to include fields you may want later. That’s a great advantage of MasterMine: You can and should include any related fields that may be needed for the report you are currently building AND any derivative reports you may wish to make in the future.
There may be a trade-off, however, in performance. The more data you have, the slower will be your report refresh and the response time as you move fields around in your report. For reports that remain mostly static, this may not be an issue. For ones you frequently rearrange to tell you new things (what we call “analysis”) this can be a problem.
The key thing to remember is that the overall data quantity, and therefore the performance of your reports, is directly affected by three elements: 1. the number or queried records, 2) the number of fields pulled per record, and 3) the lengths of the fields included. If you are likely to pull a huge number of records (say, history covering several years) you may want to scrimp on the field selection to keep your overall data quantity manageable.
Finally, consider the capabilities of your computer. Improvements in technology have dramatically raised the amount of data that is easily manageable in Excel pivot tables. See the References section of the MasterMine User Manual for technical limitations with various version of Excel. This is one case where the more current your machine and the more current your Excel version, the more likely you will have plenty of memory to work with and a smooth working experience with MasterMine.
