Zoho DB & Reports - FAQ

Note: If you have any questions not covered above that you wish to get answered, please send them to support@zohodb.com

1. What is Zoho DB & Reports?

Zoho DB & Reports is an online reporting and business intelligence service. It offers the following important capabilities:

• Quickly create powerful business and personal reporting database online
• Supports data import from variety of file formats including Excel, CSV, TSV and HTML. Also supports periodic scheduling of import
• Spreadsheet like interface for easy manual data entry and navigation
• Easy Drag & Drop based reporting & visual analysis of data
• Supports Charts, Pivot Tables, Summary and simple Tabular reports
• Export and Print Reports in variety of formats
• Supports relating data with each other through look-up columns (as you have in a relational databases)
• Full-fledged SQL (Structured Query Language) based querying of your database for creating powerful and flexible reports
• Understands SQL Queries written in multiple databases dialects - Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL
• Real-time collaboration by sharing data and reports in read or read-write modes with your friends and colleagues
• Embed reports within your Websites, Web Applications and Blogs
• Secure database with access from anywhere, anytime over the Web
• Web API (HTTP based) for pushing and pulling data & reports to/from Zoho DB & Reports

2. Who could use Zoho DB & Reports?

Zoho DB & Reports could be used by a wide variety of users, which include but not limited too:

1. Spreadsheet Users:

   If you are a Spreadsheet user who is in need of a scalable & powerful reporting database which is:

   • Easy to migrate from existing Spreadsheets
   • Powerful reporting and analytical (slice & dice) capabilities
   • Easy to Adopt
   • Highly Secure
   • Offers Collaboration features
   • Easy to Maintain (avoid backup, conflict resolution etc., )
   • Always accessible Online from anywhere on the Web

   Then, Zoho DB & Reports is for you. Zoho DB & Reports offers:

   • Easy adoption through a Spreadsheet-like interface for database and reports creation
   • Easy to import your existing tabular data in Excel, Open Office, CSV, TSV and HTML file formats into Zoho DB & Reports
   • Powerful drag & drop based reporting features for quick report creation and to do in-depth analysis of your data.
   • Supports charts, pivot tables, summary and tabular reports
   • You can Share & Collaborate your data and reports easily over the Web
   • Highly Secure through user logins
   • No Maintenance required
   • Available Online-on-the-Web, anytime and anywhere!
2. Reporting & Business Intelligence users:

   If you require:

   • Capability to upload any type of tabular data easily for reporting and analysis
   • Online, Web based report creation and publishing
   • Powerful & easy to use reporting
   • Slice & Dice analytical and Business Intelligence capabilities
   • Powerful Querying capabilities
   • Easy Collaboration features
   • Embeddable reports in your web pages and blogs
   • Accessible online anytime and anywhere on the Web

   Zoho DB & Reports Offer:

   • Complete Web based reporting database to store your data
   • Powerful drag & drop based reporting features for quick report creation and publishing.
   • Visual Analysis capability for in-depth analysis and to slice & dice your data.
   • Supports charts, pivot tables, summary and tabular reports
   • Supports data import from variety of file formats including Excel, Open Office CSV, TSV and HTML. Also supports periodic scheduling of import
   • SQL (Structured Query Language) driven querying for powerful report creation. You could provide your SQL queries written in any of the familiar database dialects, including Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL.
   • You can Share & Collaborate your reports, with your friends easily over the Web
   • Embed reports within your Websites, Web Applications and Blogs
   • Highly secure through user logins
   • Available Online-on-the-Web anytime and anywhere!
3. MS Access, File Maker and Other reporting Database/Application Users:

   If you require:

   • Online Web based reporting database and not a desktop/server database
   • Powerful reporting service to compliment or replace your existing database
   • Slice & Dice analytical and Business Intelligence capabilities
   • Powerful SQL based Querying
   • Easy Collaboration features
   • Embeddable reports in your Web application
   • Secure database with Less Maintenance (backup, administration, tuning etc., )
   • Always accessible from anywhere on the We
   • Easy to Use

   Zoho DB & Reports offers:

   • Online Reporting database with an easy to use interface
   • Supports data import from variety of file formats including Excel, CSV, TSV and HTML. Also supports periodic scheduling of import
   • Powerful drag & drop based reporting features for quick report creation and in-depth analysis of your data.
   • Supports Web-based charts, pivot tables, summary and tabular reports
   • SQL (Structured Query Language) driven querying of the database. Supports SQL queries written in any of the familiar database dialects, including Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL
   • Web API (HTTP based) for pushing and pulling data & reports to/from Zoho DB & Reports
   • You can Share & Collaborate your data and reports, with your friends easily over the Web
   • Embed reports within your Web application
   • Highly secure through user logins
   • High Performance database
   • No Maintenance required
   • Available Online-on-the-Web anytime and anywhere

3. What is the difference between Zoho DB & Reports and Zoho Creator?

The key difference between Zoho DB & Reports and Zoho Creator is In-depth reporting and analytics vs Online custom database application creation.

Zoho DB & Reports enables you to easily create powerful and sophisticated reports with your data by creating Online reporting databases. It enables you to slice & dice your data for in-depth visualization and business intelligence. Zoho Creator enables you to quickly create a powerful Online database application to collect data and trigger work flows through forms and scripting.

Zoho DB & Reports could act as a convenient back-end reporting/analytical database for your application needs. You could get data into Zoho DB & Reports through manual data entry or bulk load data from files or schedule for periodic upload of data or push data from your application through Web API (HTTP based) for reporting and analysis. Here the crucial difference is that Zoho Creator offers a hosted programming environment (with a DB backing), while Zoho DB & Reports offers a powerful reporting layer (backed by a database) for your application data.

Zoho DB & Reports would also support full-fledged relational modeling (similar to relational/analytical databases) very soon. It currently supports minimal relational modeling functionalities through Lookup columns. With lookup columns you could relate one table with another. It also offers cascade-on-delete functionality whereby when a row in the parent table is deleted it will automatically delete all the related rows in the child table(s).

The other key difference is that Zoho DB & Reports embraces SQL, and supports all major dialects of it. This enables users to do sophisticated querying on the data for creating powerful reports. We will flesh out this functionality even further in future updates. For further details on the difference between Creator and Zoho DB & Reports refer to the following blog post:

http://blogs.zoho.com/general/ask-zoho-whats-the-difference-between-zoho-db-creator-sheet/

4. How to choose between Zoho DB & Reports and Zoho Creator?

Please read the FAQ #3 before you read further. If you require a quick application development environment, with forms, scripting and basic reporting opt for Zoho Creator. If you require a powerful online reporting and analytics service with an inbuilt database support opt for Zoho DB & Reports. Zoho DB & Reports also supports Web based APIs using which you could also build your own forms and push/update/pull data into Zoho DB & Reports from any of your application.

5. Will there be an integration between Zoho DB & Reports and Zoho Creator?

We will be integrating the powerful report creation features available in Zoho DB & Reports into Zoho Creator in a future update, making it easy to create reports on the data your application generates in Creator. As a first step we will be focusing on periodically importing your Creator application data into Zoho DB & Reports for reporting and analysis. Eventually GUI level integration of making report creation features of Zoho DB & Reports available within Zoho Creator would be done.

Zoho DB & Reports will continue to be offered as a separate Online Reporting and Business intelligence service focusing on enabling users to create powerful reports and do in-depth analysis of their data. To Zoho DB & Reports, Creator is just another application data source on which it would enable powerful reporting through a tighter integration mechanism.

6. Any other integration plans of Zoho DB & Reports into other Zoho Services?

In the future we plan to offer more advanced reporting functionality for Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects via Zoho DB & Reports. We have already integrated Pivot Table feature of Zoho DB & Reports into Zoho Sheet. At present we are working on first level Creator integration as mentioned in FAQ #5. Interesting integration plans with other Zoho Business applications is also in the roadmap.

7. What are the file formats from which you could import data?

You could import tabular data from CSV (Comma Separated Values), TSV (Tab Separated Values), and HTML files. You could also copy paste data from these files as well as from Spreadsheet (Excel , OpenOffice, StarOffice) files.

8. Any restriction on the size of data that could be imported?

Currently Zoho DB & Reports allows you to import files with maximum 100,000 rows or a file size limit of 3 MB at a time. It will restrict it based on whichever condition is met first. A table in Zoho DB & Reports can contain a maximum of 500,000 rows. If you wish to upload more than 100,000 rows or a file more than 3MB at a time, you could use the CSV uploader tool.

We will incrementally increase this limit through constant observation and tweaking of Zoho DB & Reports service usage and performance. If you find these limits are constraining to your application needs, mail us your requirements to support@zohodb.com we could definitely help you.

9. What type of reports could be created in Zoho DB & Reports?

Zoho DB & Reports supports a wide variety of report creation options, which includes:

• Charts: Allows you to create any type of chart/graph
• Pivot Tables: Allows you to create a powerful view with data summarized in a grid both in horizontal and vertical columns (also known as Matrix Views)
• Tabular Views: Allows you to create simple table views with column grouping and sub-totals (aggregation)
• Summary View: Allows you to create a view with summarized values and grouping We are planning to add many more reporting options in the future.

10. Does Zoho DB & Reports support SQL (Structured Query Language) Querying?

Yes, Zoho DB & Reports supports full-fledged SQL based querying of your database. It understands SQL Queries written in any of the well-known database dialects including Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL.

11. What are the SQL Dialects supported by Zoho DB & Reports?

Zoho DB & Reports supports SQL written in a wide variety of popular database dialects. It currently supports Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL database dialects.

12. Does Zoho DB & Reports support Web (HTTP) APIs for adding, updating and querying the database?

Zoho DB & Reports supports a comprehensive HTTP based Web APIs using which application developers could add, update and query/fetch data in the database created in Zoho DB & Reports. Using these APIs users could push/pull data from Zoho DB & Reports from/to their own application. This would effectively enable Zoho DB & Reports to be a convenient reporting database framework for your applications.

View api docs @ http://zohoreportsapi.wiki.zoho.com

13. Does Zoho DB & Reports support Relational modeling?

Yes, Zoho DB & Reports supports relational modeling of your database. There are some limitations currently, which would be addressed incrementally to provide a powerful relational modeling capability in Zoho DB & Reports. The following are the important capabilities that are currently available:

• You can create tables which has lookup columns between them. This helps you to create parent-child relationships
• Zoho DB & Reports supports cascade-on-delete i.e.  when you delete a row in the parent table, it will automatically delete the corresponding rows in the child table(s)
• You can join tables using SQL Query table feature
  

14. Does Zoho DB & Reports support building Web forms or Can we use Zoho Creator Forms for add/update/delete of data into Zoho DB & Reports?

No, Zoho DB & Reports does not support building Web forms for data addition or modification or deletion in its database. It also does not support the use of Zoho Creator forms for data addition or modification or deletion into Zoho DB & Reports. Also read question #3 to #5 to know about Zoho Creator integration and also question #12.

15. Can I share my database, tables and reports created in Zoho DB & Reports with other users?

Yes, you could share your database, tables and reports created in Zoho DB & Reports with other users. Use the Share option within Zoho DB & Reports to share your tables or reports or entire database to others users. You need to provide the user email ids (who have a Zoho DB & Reports account) and set the necessary permission (Read or Read-write) to the objects being shared.

You could also make a database public for anyone to access it in a Read-only mode (no permission for editing). You can do this by setting the Access option (provided against each database listed under your My Databases tab in the home page) of the corresponding database to Public.

Note: While making a database public please choose whether to list the database under "Zoho Public Databases" list. If this is done anyone can view your database. Hence exercise caution.

16. Can I allow others to edit the data in my database?

Yes you could allow other users to edit the data in your database. Follow the instruction below to do the same:

• Select the Table whose data that you would like other users to edit (add, modify & delete data)
• Select the Share -> Share this View toolbar option
• Provide the list of user email ids to whom you want to provide read-write permission to this table. (Note: Users should have a Zoho DB & Reports account registered with this email id)
• Select the Permission as Read Write
• Provide the necessary email message for notification
• Click on Share to share your table to the users for editing (add, modify & delete)

17. Can I Embed the tables & reports created in Zoho DB & Reports into my Website, Web Application and Blogs?

Yes you could embed Tables and Reports created in Zoho DB & Reports into your Website, Web Application and Blogs. Follow the steps below to achieve the same:

• Select the table or report that you would like to embed into your Website or Blog
• Select the Publish -> Embed in Website/Blog.. option
• By default when you embed the view into your Website or Web Application or blog, it would prompt for users to login with Zoho DB & Reports login id to view the embedded view. Also users to whom you have shared the view (Using the Share option) would only be able to access the view embedded, on login.
• If you would like the embedded view to be accessible by anyone without login, then click on the link "To access this view/table without login Click here..."
• Copy and paste the code snippet provided in the text area below into your webpage or blog html content to embed this view

On embedding you will see the corresponding table or report within your Web page or blog.

18. What are the browsers supported by Zoho DB & Reports?

Zoho DB & Reports has been tested in the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6 and 7
• Firefox 2.x and Firefox 3.0 

The above browsers has been tested in the following platforms:

• Windows XP and Windows Vista
• Mac OS
• Red Hat and Mandrake Linux OS

19. What is the best viewed screen resolution for Zoho DB & Reports?

Zoho DB is best viewed in 1024 * 768 screen resolution and above.

20. Can Zoho DB & Reports be accessed from handheld devices like IPhone, Blackberry, etc.,?

No. Currently Zoho DB & Reports has not been tested in handheld devices like IPhone, Blackberry etc., We will be supporting this in the future.

Note: If you have any questions not covered above that you wish to get answered, please send them to support@zohodb.com