Pixel perfect reporting

Printed reporting systems are often referred to as pixel-perfect reporting. In fact “pixel-perfect” tends to be bandied about quite a bit in the BI business, and nearly all vendors claim to support it. Unfortunately, the term is not defined consistently.

The term “pixel-perfect” was actually invented to describe the behavior of a CRT screen – a screen is referred to as pixel-perfect if the resolution being used actually corresponds to the number of physical dots on the physical screen. It is also referred to as ‘native resolution’.

Later, the term took on another meaning. For gamers the idea of “pixel-perfect collision detection” means that the objects on screen act like they collide when they look like they collide.

But “pixel-perfect” has also crept into the area of reporting systems and taken on a somewhat vague meaning indirectly derived from the term’s screen based roots. In reporting software it refers to a high level of typographical control and graphics capabilities and to the software’s ability to create output suitable for volume printing, in particular highly formatted PDF files.

A good system that calls itself pixel-perfect should provide users with the features they would expect from a desktop publishing product. Among other things, they should have the features described in the following table.