Yes, essentially. An export to a file on a given time period would be fine, can deal with the format conversion etc myself. I'm thinking of sending arbitrary reports to management without the need for Jasper etc.
Also, publish data set as a web service dataset, and now you're into the features offered by "data virtualization" software vendors / tools (things like Teiid or Denodo, for example).
We are currently working on solving this exact same problem, developer friendly report automation sans visualization. We are entirely focused on solving the reporting problem before tacking visualisation etc. If you are interested in trying out our product, please send me an email at abhyrama at google email service and I will send you the instructions to try it out. The product is out and is being piloted in two large startups which have seen tremendous efficiency improvements in their whole reporting process. We are yet to bring the product public website up.