The current subject matter describes displaying historical data associated with one or more data values within a business intelligence report. A graphical user interface executed by a computing device can receive, from a user, a request for display of historical data associated with a specified/selected data value in a business intelligence report. Subsequently, a representational state transfer engine (RESTful engine), which can be connected to a server system connected to the computing device, can execute a representational state transfer service (RESTful service) to fetch historical data from current and past instances associated with the data value. Then, the RESTful engine can write the fetched historical data to a file. The RESTful engine can generate or determine a uniform resource locator (URL) to the file, and can send the URL to the computing device. When the URL is selected by the user, the computing device can display the file.