I just read an interesting post from Chris Webb called Why can’t we just draw our own reports?. In his post, Chris explains that since most reports start out as a quick sketch on the back of an envelope, he would like to see a system that understands this freehand drawing and could build the entire report based on the drawing. This system would involve either a tablet PC or a document scanner, a good character recognition software, and lots of logic to understand the complexities of grouping, sorting, calculated columns, aggregations, etc. As Chris points out, this type of ‘magic’ software doesn’t exist in this exact form, however there is one product called BIRT Report Studio from Actuate that is about as close at it gets.
The BIRT Report Studio is a web-based report authoring environment that uses AJAX technology to allow end-users to drag report content together entirely in the browser. You can try it yourself by clicking on the image or link below. Note: the link will require you to sign in to your free BIRT Exchange Community site account.
