Chapter 13. Document processing and reporting

Though we’d all love to be video game programmers or lead developers for the Next Big Web 2.0 multimedia experience, most programmers have less glamorous problems to solve. This inevitably includes processing documents exported from sources, ranging from legacy systems to industry-standard SQL databases. Of course, collecting the data and translating it into a useable form is only half the challenge. Aggregated data then needs to be manipulated, analyzed, and formatted in ways that clearly communicate what that data represents. The field of reporting ranges from quick sales reports for a small business to massive statistical analyses for the enterprise.

There are numerous canned solutions for processing one form of document and translating it to another, or for running standard reports against data. For many uses, these applications are the way to go. However, these solutions aren’t golden hammers. When developing custom software, it’s often desirable to get exactly the kinds of results you’re looking for, instead of using prebuilt solutions that may or may not be what you need. For this kind of problem, Ruby shines.