Great thought-provoking article. Nice to think a little outside of the box!

Actually, I have always thought that there are still only the 4 basic functions, Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD). It has always seemed a foreign concept to me that reporting systems were somehow "different" and not a part of standard applications. All standard data-driven applications typically support CRUD, so reporting is just reading data and displaying it.

At the same time, I also have always thought that reports often fill a gap left by missing application functionality.. and there isn't anything wrong with that, when you consider how much time it takes to build a truly well-designed application that accounts for all the possibilities/changes presented by a dynamic, quickly changing business environment. Reports often let users work with data and are quicker to build than applications that might alleviate their need to work with reports.

By the way, regarding the article, it struck me as kind of funny that reports are considered to be read only, and somehow, reading is an act that doesn't "change" data. I find it's quite the opposite. Take the old saying from physics - by observing something you "change" it! For example, consider a SQL view - depending on how it is written, it could be used to mislead a viewer as to the true contents of the underlying table, therefore changing the perception of the underlying data. Or, having seen a user view some data and believe that there was some trend or meaning when in fact, what they were viewing was a data quality anomaly - data seems pretty tricky that way!

I guess you've discovered a way with reports to actually combine some Update into your Read - which I don't see any problem with, since reading itself might be considered a "change".

Enough rambling from me!

Jon