recommendations for report generator (Python or web service)

Question

I maintain several web applications and I'd like to add some "nice" reporting/analytics pages. Building that once is simple enough (e.g. using flot or similar plotting libraries) but somehow it seems like there should be a report generation library out there which "just" generates the necessary graphs without much coding + offer some filtering ability.

There are some tools out there but for some reason there was never a good fit:

• must work on Linux
• open source preferred though closed source works as well as long the pricing model is also suitable for small installs
• Python API required (or external services using standard web protocols)

I realize that this is not exactly a unique question but I couldn't find other stackoverflow questions with the same scope. Any pointers appreciated.

Update (2012-08-09, 15:10 UTC): I realized I did not state some more requirements/wishes:

• web interface to access reports
• access control: Each user can only get reports on his own data (simple to do with a library, might be hard with an external server)
• filtering: I need interactive filtering of values based on some parameters (e.g. "only events in this time frame", "only in place X").

Answer 1

Windward* is one software company that offers a solution that seems to meet most of your needs. They offer a Python API through either Jython or a RESTful API (their Java Engine and Javelin, respectively), and their main strength is that template design is done in Microsoft Office, so reports can be very flexible and are easy to put together (most people already know how to use Word, so there's also much less learning curve than other solutions out there). You can add dynamic filters that take parameters at runtime or change on-the-fly, you can output to a variety of formats including HTML and PDF, and it works with pretty much every major datasource. For a web interface, you can either build your own and easily integrate reporting into it (Engine) or buy one pre-built and modify it to your specifications (Javelin).

On the downside, they are closed-source and without knowing more about your setup, it would be difficult for me to say whether their pricing would work. Might be worth a look, though--the links above and their documentation wiki are probably good places to start looking to see if you're a fit.

*Disclaimer: I work for Windward. I do believe they are one of the better reporting packages out there, but there are others that may fit your needs too.