Interactive reporting architecture: A WYSIWYG approach to enterprise reporting

Business Reporting Solutions have widespread use in most enterprises. However, a great many of these solutions are composed of two parts: a design mode and a preview mode. Reports are designed by using abstract building blocks such as placeholders and data bands in design mode without the knowledge of how they look when rendered. This approach forces users to switch between design and preview modes constantly. Besides, end users generally have no or very limited customization options because design modes are so complicated that only power users can handle. Therefore we are presenting a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) model in which a report can be designed and viewed at the same time. By providing a very familiar word-processor like interface, we enable end users to edit reports according to their custom needs.