n00b here, trying to make all the pieces fit.

[seth_owings]

I'm trying to help a client understand the limits of AEM, but I'm not 100% sure I know what all of these pieces are or how they fit together. Please correct/help me fill in the gaps! :)

CQ* is the series of content management systems that are part of AEM. CQ6.* is the latest version.

What are the default reporting capabilities that come with the CMS out of the box?

If we have the dev talent capable of doing it, can't we essentially build whatever reporting we need inside of the CMS module without having to buy an additional product?

Thanks in advance!

[smacdonald2008 · Accepted solution]

AEM supports out of the box reporting:

http://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-0/administer/operations/reporting.html

Now with an AEM developer - you can build custom reporting service. For example - you can query JCR nodes/sling resources and build a custom service. For example - export the data to an excel spreadsheet:

https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/using/aem-reporting-service.html

AEM is very powerful in that it lets you extend front end components and back end custom services. 

Hope this helps 

[seth_owings]

If we wanted to track the movements/actions of specific end-users (not CMS users), is is possible to build something to track and report on that level of detail? Assuming we get someone (not me) with the technical capability to do so?

[smacdonald2008]

One task that you can do to address this use case is to create event handlers to track changes made at the JCR level. You can track the changes made by users  Then you can dump data like that into a report. There is not too much a Java developer cannot do with AEM. That is-- AEM exposes a rich set of Java APIs for these type of requirements. 

Maybe  - for example - you are interested in tracking when a user replicates content:

https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/using/replication_events.html