In less than 300 pages, the author skims the field of reporting with Ruby on Rails. Not meant as an authoritative reference nor a tutorial on the Ruby language nor Rails framework, David points to useful utilities and gems that let the developer deliver analyzed, summarized, processed data in many formats. For a great many applications, in the view of the users, the reports ARE the application, so getting the right format and right data presentation are essential. David briefly touches on the database fundamentals and then dives right into a set of practical and easily-understood examples using common data (eBay, PayPal, SugarCRM) and demonstrates how to create output in the most demanded formats: web pages, PDFs, graphs, and the office formats. With a topic so broad and a book of moderate size, David trades depth for breadth and does a great job of pointing out many Rails idioms and useful 3rd party tools.

Disclaimer: David's an associate of mine and arranged for a review copy of the book.