Mechanisms are provided for auto-generating reports based on metadata. Entities in databases may have some associated metadata, and this metadata may serve as the basis of the reports. Such reports may be generated not only automatically but also dynamically. The generation of reports may also be a function of the role traversal between entities, such that if a role indicates at most one instance of the target entity is related to an instance of the source entity, a single-type report can be created, whereas if the role indicates many instances of the target entity may be related, a different kind or report can be generated, namely, a multi-type report. Lastly, even though reports are auto-generated, such reports can be overridden or customized via user interfaces or application programming interfaces.