reporting_dataset

Overview

Reporting Dataset provides a flexible way to create analytics-friendly datasets from Drupal entities.

Drupal stores entity data across many normalized tables, which makes reporting and analytics queries complex. This module allows site builders to visually select fields from entities, paragraphs, and nested structures and automatically generate SQL views or materialized datasets for reporting and export.

Key Features

• Visual schema explorer to browse entity structures
• Drag-and-drop dataset builder
• Supports nodes, paragraphs, nested paragraphs, and entity references
• Automatic SQL VIEW generation
• Optional materialized dataset tables for performance
• Multiple data strategies: Expand, Aggregate, JSON
• Multilingual dataset support
• Dataset rebuild via UI, cron, or Drush
• Extensible via Drupal hooks

Using the Dataset with Drupal Views

Each dataset generated by this module creates a SQL view or materialized table in the Drupal database.

These datasets can be used as a data source in Drupal Views to build reports, dashboards, and exports.

For easy integration with Views, this module works well with the contributed module
View Custom Table,
which allows Views to use custom database tables as a base table.

Typical workflow:

1. Create a dataset using the Reporting Dataset builder.
2. The module generates a dataset table or SQL view such as reporting_dataset_article.
3. Install and enable the View Custom Table module.
4. Create a Drupal View using the generated dataset table.
5. Display the data as a report, dashboard, or export.

Datasets can also be exported using modules such as Views Data Export.

Use Cases

• Reporting dashboards
• Data portals
• CSV exports
• BI tools such as PowerBI, Tableau, and Metabase
• Analytics pipelines
• Complex content structure reporting

Example

Entity type: node
Bundle: article

Selected fields:

• node.title
• node.created
• node.field_tags.name

Generated dataset view:

reporting_dataset_article

This dataset can be queried directly in the database or used through Drupal Views for building reports and exports.

Future Roadmap

Future improvements planned for this module include:

• Additional extension hooks to allow custom modules to alter schema discovery and dataset generation
• Hooks for modifying generated SQL before dataset creation
• Hooks for customizing dataset build and refresh lifecycle
• Hooks for extending field handling and dataset strategies

These hooks will make it easier for other modules to integrate with and extend the Reporting Dataset module.