Story

Hi HN,

For several years I worked on DocumentBurster, a report‑bursting tool used alongside various reporting systems to automate large‑scale document distribution. Many teams relied on Crystal Reports — great for “pixel‑perfect” output, not so great for automation or distribution.

Over time I noticed a broader pattern: most reporting/BI tools — commercial or open‑source — only solve one slice of the workflow. Some focus on generating reports, others (like DocumentBurster) handle automation and distribution, others do dashboards/analytics, and many modern tools are SaaS‑oriented (e.g., Power BI), making self‑hosting difficult or impossible. Teams kept stitching together multiple tools just to build a complete reporting pipeline.

That’s what led me to build ReportBurster.

It’s a self‑hosted, open‑source platform that brings together:

- report generation - report bursting & distribution - dashboards and analytics - a self‑service portal - automation scripting - optional AI helpers for SQL and configuration

The goal is a unified workflow instead of juggling separate generators, distributors, and dashboard tools.

Try it:

Website (docs, examples): https://www.reportburster.com/

Quickstart (“ReportBurster in 5 Minutes”): https://www.reportburster.com/docs/quickstart

GitHub: https://github.com/flowkraft/reportburster

*A Docker version is coming soon.

On Windows it works immediately by following the Quickstart.

On Linux/Mac we haven’t (yet) shipped start/stop scripts, but they’re trivial to generate: download the ReportBurster Server and ask any LLM to convert `startServer.bat` and `tools/rbsj/startRbsjServer.bat` into shell scripts.

You can also watch the presentation video, browse the docs, or open a GitHub issue if you want native Linux/Mac support.

I’d love feedback on what’s confusing, what’s missing, and what you’d expect from a self‑hosted BI platform.

Happy to answer questions.