Ad Hoc Report

The phrase “ad hoc” means “for this” and signifies that whatever it is referring to is being used for a specific task. “Ad hoc report” has emerged from the intersection of information technology and accounting/compliance. Generating an ad hoc report means accessing information from a database to meet custom information requirements. In other words, an ad hoc report is a one-time request for specific data that cannot be satisfied by the pre-set database reporting parameters.

The need for ad hoc reports has grown substantially over the last few years as both federal and state governments have significantly increased the regulatory compliance burden, especially for larger businesses. Ad hoc reports, such as fine-grain reports on specific user activities, are also typically required for forensic audits or as part of an investigation looking into security breaches or other legal issues.

According to TechTarget, overuse of ad hoc reports can become a problem for businesses. Most ad hoc reports are meant to be run once, but they are regularly overused. Overusing ad hoc repots “can lead to unnecessary reporting processes that impact high-volume reporting periods. Reports should be reviewed periodically for efficiencies to determine whether they continue to serve a useful business purpose.”

Generating ad hoc reports can be a time-consuming task if you don’t have the right tools for the job. Many database management suites were not developed with ad hoc queries in mind, and setting up custom database searches can be difficult.

Idera’s SQL Compliance Manager, on the other hand, is designed from the ground up for custom queries, and setting up ad hoc reports is easy and intuitive. SQL Compliance Manager offers more than traditional auditing software by providing real-time monitoring and maintaining detailed records on all data access, updates, data structure modifications and changes to security permissions. The audit data collected is completely customizable and can be defined at the server, database and object level.

SQL Compliance Manager was developed in consultation with accounting industry experts such as Ernst and Young and InformationShield Inc. in order to facilitate current industry-standard security, compliance and auditing policies.