Developing Queries in Production

Question

My client insist on developing and testing queries in their production system. The were told that this was the best option. I disagree.
I come from an R/3 background and have never heard of such a thing. Their reasoning is that the transports never worked.
Can someone help me with some additional reasons why this should not be allowed other than the obvious.
Thanks

Answer 1

I have been an advocate of permitting creation of Adhoc queries in production. We all must keep in mind that R3 is a transactional system whereas BW is a data warehouse.
What is the use of a data warehouse if you cannot obtain Adhoc reports, as the name implies, in production, on the fly, without going through an IT QA and transport process. Most of the improvements occur with Super Users and functional administrators improving the processes and queries to fit the needs of the users. How would a super user see changed conditional and exception reporting, if he does not have access to do it?
That said, the best practices I have seen include a routine process to eliminate / delete very old redundant queries created by users in Production. The organization does need trained users to do such an activity. All critical and significant queries should get duplicated and transported through Development, and not be changed in Production environment. Only such queries should get placed in roles. Access to infoareas should be limited to Super users. Global structures should be used and available to be modified after they are copied using save as function.
I am aware of the down sides on maintainance and performance, when you permit such a process. Still, the benefits are much more to an enterprise, to ignore such an option.
Sunil Aghi