A system generates linked sets of drill-down-enabled reports of increasing levels of detail from one or more databases. Linking relationships between reports are defined using the query language of the databases. Result sets are obtained that includes (1) the sought-after data, and (2) metadata that identifies drill-down reports to be generated if related report elements are selected. When the query is executed, the system passes the sought-after data to a reporting application programming interface, which generates a report (e.g., a pie chart, 3-D bar chart, cross-tabbed table). If an end-user selects one of the report elements (e.g., a bar on the chart), the system maps the reported event to the associated data of the result set. If the associated data has corresponding meta-data containing a drill-down directive, the system then generates the report identified by the drill-down directive.