A report is the presentation of data in a coherent and legible manner, generally for printing.

The report displays number charts, managing headers, footers, subtotals etc.

A report generator is a program which allows one to define a report based on certain elements, with a minimum of programming, simply using an interactive interface. Once defined, the report can be generated at regular intervals.

A report can depend on settings: the year, month, region, sector of activity, etc. As such a single report which has been defined once can be generated using different variants, depending on the values of certain settings.

The report settings can be entered by the user based on their criteria, and the user can also vary these settings to narrow down their search.

In other cases, settings can be automatically defined by management rules, for example to give each sales agent a report on their monthly sales. These are known as “burst reports”.

There are two report generation phases:

• An initial conception phase, which usually requires specific expertise, and which is not in the hands of the end user;

• A settings and production phase, which does not require specialist expertise and can be carried out by the end user.

We would, of course, like to be able to limit the first phase, which is the most expensive, and be able to put the conception tools in the hands of the end user. But experience has shown that this is rarely possible: even though the user could learn how the tools work, they have other priorities.

In 2007 reporting tools for end users and “ad hoc” tools appeared in open source B.I. solutions. This allows end users with no specific technical capabilities, to generate simple reports easily and rapidly.