Is Reporting Dead?

The world is made of data. Our human senses process many gigabytes of information every day, every moment of our lives. Much of this information is essential for our survival. Even so, the vast majority is lost shortly after it is collected. About 5,000 years ago, someone decided that it was a good idea to start recording important information and presenting it in a form that made it easy to make sense of and profit from that data. Thus the report was born!

As humanity grew and civilization spread across the globe, the need for reporting to understand and manage resources as well as promote commerce and science also grew. In particular, there was a need to generate reports in a timely fashion, which led to the use of mechanical calculating devices, later followed by electronic computers. One of the first high-level programming languages, COBOL, was specifically created with reporting purposes in mind.

Computing hardware and software continued to evolve at a rapid pace, which led to several paradigm shifts in reporting. New ways to access data developed due to the rise of the World Wide Web and the need to not only manage data on a petabyte scale, but also deliver it to billions of devices around the world. Reports are no longer just a static affair printed on paper, delivered once per quarter. Instead they have become dynamic, interactive, and deliverable on demand in real time. And simple charts and graphs have given way to sophisticated, interactive visualizations ...