I’ve found the best way to begin any reporting project is to get a good handle on the data behind the reports.  Put plainly, if your data house isn’t in order your reports will suffer.  That’s why I offer a free data audit at the beginning of every project. 

First, I’ll email you an app that you can run from your desktop or from the machine that hosts the instance of SQL Server we are looking at (sorry, this is a SQL Server only offer).  Next you run the app and it will go out and collect a whole bunch of information for us. 

The collected details will all be saved as an Excel file (along with several other files we might want to look at if we need more detail later).  Finally, you simply send me that excel file and I’ll prepare a summary of findings for you.

Go ahead and review that file before you send it to me.  It doesn’t contain any sensitive information, it’s just a lot of details about the way your database is set up.  It looks at meta data describing your tables, views, stored procedures, indexes … NOT the contents of any tables.  The data audit does not include any security related details but it will sometimes point to security related issues you will want to be aware of (like objects owned by a named account or reuse of logins).