In the early days of CMMS, smart maintenance people exported data to a spreadsheet (typically, Lotus 123 or Borland Quattro Pro) to extract useful information. The sheer time consumption limited the amount of information extracted.
With today's relational database CMMS products (typically SQL variants), you have advanced reporting abilities with one-click report generation. You can set up specific reports to show information that you slice and dice however you need, and you can add drilldowns.
You can also quickly compare metrics. You could, for example, see the relationship of motor thrust bearing temperatures to lubrication intervals.
