1.3 Report vs. Dashboard
The end result of your development process is a generally a report or a dashboard. It is important to understand the similarities and differences between these two methods of data presentation. Both reports and dashboards present data, but they provide a very different user experience.
The most profound difference between reports and dashboards is the level of interactivity:
• To create a highly interactive environment, use a dashboard. See Getting Started with Dashboards for more information.
• To present static data in a multi-page format, use a report. See Getting Started with Reports for more information.
The table below compares some other features of reports and dashboards.
Report |
Dashboard |
Supports multiple pages. |
Supports only a single screen, but allows tabbed interfaces. |
Supports multiple data sources in a single report. |
Allows only one data source per dashboard, but dashboards with different data sources can be nested. |
Static, but can be made more interactive through parameterization. |
Dynamic and interactive. |
Does not support materialized views. |
Supports materialized views. |
Provides full desktop-based design tools and limited web-based design tools (Ad Hoc editing). |
Provides full web-based design tools. |
Supports reusability via beans, meta-templates, subreports, and parameter sheets. |
Supports reusability via nesting. |
Can be viewed under the Portal Report tab. |
Can be viewed under the Portal Report tab and Dashboard tab. |
Can be exported to a wide variety of formats. |
Can be exported to Excel, PDF, or PowerPoint. |
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