PC-based report writers used to be the answer. Reports consisting of very large result sets may also require sophisticated formatting that extends the time required to completely create and process the report. But the reality is that when large databases are involved, database professionals are needed to optimize the database for performance, allocate data and processing among the platforms, and create and test complicated processing logic. Advanced reporting tools consist of several components.
End users run reports from client workstations.
Reports are stored and run on a second tier, and database servers are the third tier. This architecture is intended to allow reports to run efficiently against large databases and also return large amounts of data. The heart of an advanced reporting system is a report server that offloads processing from end-user workstations. For example, the Actuate Reporting System's architecture includes separate end user, developer, and report server engine components. A report server can run on its own Windows NT or Unix platform, or it can coexist on the database server platform.