Ad hoc reporting is a means of creating reports based upon data in computer programs. Many databases have a standard menu of reports for data. Ad hoc reports are requests from users for data to be presented "on the fly", Crystal Reports is an example of a ad hoc report writer which allows users to create queries to generate data reports, Another example of a ad hoc reporting tool is Cognos by
. IBM, which may be accessed at http://forms.cognos.com/.