Publish / report · All operations

Make a report

Render a report, document, dashboard, chart or map.

Status

In arcform

A feature, not a step

It lives in Brightfield's view. crates/brightfield-report/src/lib.rs in brightfield at 0a8362e

Shape of the result
the table sent out, with nothing new to look at
Level
not a step

Variants

Run a ready-made analysis report

Produce a pre-formatted report from a vendor dataset or a stored analysis.

Build a report from parts and render it

Assemble text, tables, images and layout pieces into a report and write it out as HTML, PDF or an office file.

Render a map

Draw spatial rows as a layered or thematic map with a legend and scale.

Style a table for display

Format the rows as a styled display table, or write them through a text template.

What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 86.2% of 312 rows (exact class, version 2).

Alteryx Designer (17)
  • Allocate Reportread 2026-09-27

    Run a pre-formatted or custom Allocate demographic report

  • Imageread 2026-09-27

    Add a static or run-time image as a report snippet

  • Interactive Chartread 2026-09-27

    Build interactive multi-layer bar, line, scatter and pie charts as report snippets

  • Layoutread 2026-09-27

    Arrange two or more report snippets horizontally or vertically with sizes and borders

  • Map Legend Builderread 2026-09-27

    Rebuild a map legend table from the parts produced by Map Legend Splitter

  • Map Legend Splitterread 2026-09-27

    Split a Report Map legend into its component parts for customising

  • Overlayread 2026-09-27

    Place report snippets such as maps, text and images on top of one another

  • Profile Comparison Reportread 2026-09-27

    Generate a report comparing two behaviour profiles

  • Profile Detail Reportread 2026-09-27

    Generate a report of the cluster types present in a behaviour profile

  • Profile Rank Reportread 2026-09-27

    Generate a rank report from a geography profile and a product profile

  • Renderread 2026-09-27

    Turn report snippets into a finished report file: PDF, HTML, Office formats and others

  • Report Footerread 2026-09-27

    Add a footer to a report

  • Report Headerread 2026-09-27

    Add a header to a report

  • Report Mapread 2026-09-27

    Render a layered or thematic map image from spatial inputs, with legend and scale

  • Report Textread 2026-09-27

    Create a styled text snippet for a report, optionally filled from incoming data

  • Tableread 2026-09-27

    Create a data table or pivot table snippet for a report

  • Visual Layoutread 2026-09-27

    Arrange non-grouped report elements on a page for Render

KNIME Analytics Platform (11)
OpenRefine (1)
  • Templating exporterread 2026-09-27

    Write text from a row template with embedded expressions, a prefix, suffix and separator; JSON by default

Pentaho Data Integration (1)
Polars (1)
  • DataFrame.styleread 2026-09-27

    Turn the frame into a styled display table through the Great Tables package

Talend (5)
  • tBarChartread 2026-09-27

    Render the input rows as a bar chart in a PNG image file

  • tDqReportRunread 2026-09-27

    Run the analyses listed in a data quality report and save the results to the data quality data mart

  • tJasperOutputread 2026-09-27

    Render input rows as a report from a Jaspersoft iReport .jrxml template

  • tJasperOutputExecread 2026-09-27

    Read a source file and render it as a report from a Jaspersoft iReport .jrxml template

  • tLineChartread 2026-09-27

    Render the input rows as a line chart in a PNG image file

VisiData (1)
  • svg (saver)read 2026-09-23

    Save as a graph canvas as SVG

Background

A report generator takes data from a source such as a database, XML stream or spreadsheet and uses it to produce a document for a particular human readership.[1] Standalone report generators may work with multiple data sources and export reports to different document formats.[1]

When to use it

Information systems theory specifies that information delivered to a human reader must be timely, accurate and relevant.[1] Report generation software targets relevance, by presenting information in the way the target reader most readily understands.[1] Reach for a report when the reader is a person and the question is settled; while the question is still open, explore the table instead. (Meridian's view)

In KNIME, the Report HTML Writer node writes a self-contained HTML file that can be shared on its own but is no longer interactive.[2] In Alteryx Designer, the Render tool's PDF output is limited to 8,191 pages, and Alteryx recommends a limit of 500 records per PDF output.[3] The Alteryx Render tool can group data into separate reports, creating a separate report for each group of a chosen column.[3] When each reader needs their own slice of the same report, split the report by a column in one run rather than filtering and rendering it once per reader. (Meridian's view)

OpenRefine's Templating exporter treats anything inside doubled curly braces as an expression and writes anything outside them as straight text.[4] When the user clicks Export, OpenRefine's Templating exporter outputs a simple .txt file and discards the template.[4] Keep a copy of a template's fields before exporting if the report is to be made again. (Meridian's view)

The method

An early report writer was part of NOMAD, developed in the 1970s.[1] Dedicated reporting software such as Crystal Reports and BusinessObjects gained prominence in the 1990s, amid growing demand for business intelligence.[1]

In Alteryx Designer, the Render tool transforms report snippets into presentation-quality reports, in formats including PDF, HTML, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.[3] In Alteryx Designer, most reports require a Render tool to publish them, though the Allocate Report tool can publish content without one.[3] In KNIME, the Report Template Creator node defines a report's basic layout, such as page size and orientation, and a component downstream then fills the report.[5] KNIME's Report PDF Writer keeps each part's page configuration when a report was concatenated from reports with different page sizes or orientations.[6]

Great Tables, a Python package developed by Richard Iannone and supported by Posit Software, PBC, builds tables through a chainable application programming interface that starts with GT().[7] In Great Tables, a table can be given a header, formatted values and styles, and exported to HTML, LaTeX or image files.[7] Polars does not implement table styling itself: its DataFrame.style property defers to the Great Tables package.[8]

Compared with the alternatives

Great Tables distinguishes display tables, such as those in a web page, a journal article or a magazine, from data tables such as DataFrames.[7] In Great Tables, display tables are thought of as output only, tables that would not be used as input again.[7] Writing a data file is the choice when a program reads the result next; making a report is the choice when a person does. (Meridian's view)

Sources

  1. [1]Report generator - Wikipediasecondary source
  2. [2]Report HTML Writerdocumentation
  3. [3]Render Tooldocumentation
  4. [4]Exporting your work | OpenRefinedocumentation
  5. [5]Report Template Creatordocumentation
  6. [6]Report PDF Writerdocumentation
  7. [7]Great Tablesdocumentation
  8. [8]polars.DataFrame.style — Polars documentationdocumentation