Within the “reporting” space, reports are primary concerned
with transforming business data into a format that enables business analysts to
understand the condition of the business and make informed decisions based on
that condition. While simple reporting can be done with tools like data grids,
reporting solutions offer much more flexibility and power to present data
wherever it’s needed- be that in a Windows application or a web application.
By logically combining reporting objects, organizations
receive unprecedented ways to view their business performance and to analyze
the information in the most efficient manner. Reporting gives the ability to
create reports containing any number of report objects - charts, cross tabs,
and lists, as well as non-reporting components such as styling, images, and
text. These objects allow you to create fairly simple data views such as
invoices and inventory reports, or more advanced data dashboards. Their true
power however lies in the ability to add calculations for creating forecasts,
to filter data in order to see the organization’s performance for a particular
period of time, and even to conditionally format data to highlight the most
important information.