which report writer?

[Jeff]

I'd appreciate the opinion of existing report generation software users. I
need to create a .pdf with a table of row labels and data from SQL queries.
I'd also like to put a few charts in from JChart.

There's JasperReports, DataVision, JFreeReport. Has anyone had a
particularly good or bad experience with any of these?

Thanks

 

[Rhino]

I'd appreciate the opinion of existing report generation software users. I
need to create a .pdf with a table of row labels and data from SQL queries.
I'd also like to put a few charts in from JChart.

There's JasperReports, DataVision, JFreeReport. Has anyone had a
particularly good or bad experience with any of these?

I haven't used any of the tools you listed but I'd like to add another
candidate to the list: iText. I've used it successfully to create PDFs
containing tables. I haven't tried to build any charts with it though; I'm
not sure if it can do that.

The main URL for iText is http://www.lowagie.com/iText/; you can also get
the code at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/itext/

iText is a free, open source API that is well documented with a detailed
tutorial and a large, active mailing list.

Rhino

 

[Jason Herald]

I personally like Forumla One e.Report Engine.

See here :
http://www.reportingengines.com/products/ereportengine/overview.jsp

--
If you have any additional questions or need source code email
(e-mail address removed).

Thanks

Jason Herald

 

[karlheinz klingbeil]

Jeff schrub am Montag, 4. April 2005 13:06 folgendes:

There's JasperReports, DataVision, JFreeReport. Has
anyone had a particularly good or bad experience with
any of these?

I am using JFreeReport in my Software (Rezeptbuch Pro,
free at the links below) and i can recommend it,
because it is easy to use and powerful enough to do
standard-like reports.

 

[Alex Molochnikov]

You can try Scribe from www.reportgenerator.org.

It will let you run SQL quieries, create charts from JFreeChart and output
the results in various formats, including PDF.

Alex Molochnikov
Gestalt Corporation

 

[John McGrath]

There's JasperReports, DataVision, JFreeReport. Has anyone had a
particularly good or bad experience with any of these?

I had good experiences with JasperReports on a project I worked on. I did
not actually write the reports - another developer did that, but he had
good things to say about Jasper and everything seemed to run very smoothly.

 

[John McGrath]

I haven't used any of the tools you listed but I'd like to add another
candidate to the list: iText. I've used it successfully to create PDFs
containing tables.

FYI, JasperReports uses iText to generate PDF-formatted reports.

 

[David Segall]

I'd appreciate the opinion of existing report generation software users. I
need to create a .pdf with a table of row labels and data from SQL queries.
I'd also like to put a few charts in from JChart.

There's JasperReports, DataVision, JFreeReport. Has anyone had a
particularly good or bad experience with any of these?

Thanks

I don't know the others but I'm impressed with iReport
<http://ireport.sourceforge.net/> which is a front end to
JasperReports and allows you to visually design the reports.

 

[steve]

I'd appreciate the opinion of existing report generation software users. I
need to create a .pdf with a table of row labels and data from SQL queries.
I'd also like to put a few charts in from JChart.

There's JasperReports, DataVision, JFreeReport. Has anyone had a
particularly good or bad experience with any of these?

Thanks

go with Ireports, it is a front end designer for jasperreports.

the result is that you can output in virtually any format:
pdf,XLS,HTml, tiff
etc
one "fly" in the ointment however, is that each time you upgrade the
JasperReport library, you have to re-compile ALL the reports.
which can be a pain for a distributed app.

Steve

 

[Steve Green]

I am in the process of rewriting a report generation tool I wrote in Java. I
intend to add some base level features that invalidate my previous work. I
would welcome some input as the types of features you desire in the report
tool. Somewhere down the road I will post the application to the web.

--Steve

 

[Jeff]

I have pretty basic requirements:
1. put some charts and tables in a .pdf. The charts and tables will be
generated by methods that I write.
2. insert footers, headers, etc

I look forward to hearing about your new application,

Jeff

I am in the process of rewriting a report generation tool I wrote in Java.
I intend to add some base level features that invalidate my previous work.
I would welcome some input as the types of features you desire in the
report tool. Somewhere down the road I will post the application to the
web.

--Steve

 

[Steve Green]

I have pretty basic requirements:

1. put some charts and tables in a .pdf. The charts and tables will be
generated by methods that I write.
2. insert footers, headers, etc

I look forward to hearing about your new application,

The intent of my application is to generate reports from relational
databases without the need to do coding or SQL.

I had planned on charts, but I did not plan on a plugin setup. If I
understand what your asking for I should write a plugin setup to allow for
users to create custom parts.

My first version had grid areas that had headers and footers and could be
nested. I am not sure if that covers your need for tables or not.

I don't have specific page headers and footers, the whole page is open
realestate for placing fields. I will consider adding page headers and page
footers if that is what you are asking for. In fact that gives me some
additional ideas to consider.

My first version also would generate PDF files using iText so I have that
requirement covered.

If you are curious about what I have in mind from a general perspective you
can view the document I made for it at my website. If you are really brave
you could even download version 0.2 from there as well. (version 1.0 will be
a complete rewrite with more features and a better GUI.)

If you or anyone visits my website I would appreciate any comments you
should have.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze4kzxs/

--Steve

 

[steve]

I am in the process of rewriting a report generation tool I wrote in Java. I
intend to add some base level features that invalidate my previous work. I
would welcome some input as the types of features you desire in the report
tool. Somewhere down the road I will post the application to the web.

--Steve

I'd appreciate the opinion of existing report generation software users.
I need to create a .pdf with a table of row labels and data from SQL
queries. I'd also like to put a few charts in from JChart.

There's JasperReports, DataVision, JFreeReport. Has anyone had a
particularly good or bad experience with any of these?

Thanks

why re-invent the wheel?

 

[Steve Green]

I am in the process of rewriting a report generation tool I wrote in
Java. I
intend to add some base level features that invalidate my previous work.
I
would welcome some input as the types of features you desire in the
report
tool. Somewhere down the road I will post the application to the web.

--Steve



why re-invent the wheel?

I really don't see myself as re-inventing the wheel rather making a
different style of wheel. My original version was finished back in 2003 and
I put it aside for a while. Now I am in the process of revisiting the
subject in a more structured and pattern oriented way.

This is an exersize for me to utilize Java JDK 1.5, UML, and OOP patterns. I
looked into your pictures and the screenshots at iReports and they look ok,
but I am trying to do something a little different.

It may be that nobody will be interested in what I have in mind and that is
ok with me. I find it fun to work on this program and a challege to add
interesting features.

 

[Alex Molochnikov]

I watched this thread for a while, and it appears to me that the feature set
described in your posts (page headers/footers, page as a real estate for
placing fields, PDF-formatted output, charts etc.) is very close (in fact,
identical) to that of Scribe. I am curious to hear a feedback from you on my
assumption.

As for the "reinventing the wheel", you may indeed be doing just that - but
if your objective is to learn something in the process, then it is worth it.

Alex Molochnikov
www.reportgenerator.org

 

[Steve Green]

I watched this thread for a while, and it appears to me that the feature
set
described in your posts (page headers/footers, page as a real estate for
placing fields, PDF-formatted output, charts etc.) is very close (in fact,
identical) to that of Scribe. I am curious to hear a feedback from you on
my
assumption.

As for the "reinventing the wheel", you may indeed be doing just that -
but
if your objective is to learn something in the process, then it is worth
it.

Alex Molochnikov
www.reportgenerator.org

I am in the process of downloading Scribe to see exactly what it does.
Looking at the info. on the website it seems to me that it is along the
lines of what I had in mind, although I didn't intend to do flowcharts. My
intent was to make the interface in a different way. I will play with it a
bit to see if it gives me any ideas. Hopefully I will not get to many and
experience a bit of unwelcome scope creep.

Thanks,
Steve

 

[Steve Green]

I watched this thread for a while, and it appears to me that the feature
set
described in your posts (page headers/footers, page as a real estate for
placing fields, PDF-formatted output, charts etc.) is very close (in fact,
identical) to that of Scribe. I am curious to hear a feedback from you on
my
assumption.

As for the "reinventing the wheel", you may indeed be doing just that -
but
if your objective is to learn something in the process, then it is worth
it.

Alex Molochnikov
www.reportgenerator.org

Well, the install froze up on me so I will not be able to play with Scribe,
but I spent a bit of time looking at the tutorials. I am impressed, they did
a good job with there flowcharting tool. They also seemed to have a solution
to some issues that I had not resolved, namely the updating of databases. I
will try my best to keep my implementation different from thiers.

Steve

 

[Alex Molochnikov]

Well, the install froze up on me so I will not be able to play with

Scribe,

I wonder why it froze up. What OS did you try to install it on? And at what
point did it hung?

but I spent a bit of time looking at the tutorials. I am impressed, they did
a good job with there flowcharting tool.

Thank you. "They" is actually us - Gestalt Corporation.

They also seemed to have a solution
to some issues that I had not resolved, namely the updating of databases. I
will try my best to keep my implementation different from thiers.

There are probably more issues for a report generator to resolve, apart from
updating the databases (which, strictly speaking, would be outside of the
scope of the RG functionality). Things like e-mailing the reports,
publishing them over the Web, cascading them in a drill-down sequence,
running them in the background as a separate process, scheduling them for
automatic execution - to name just a few.

...I didn't intend to do flowcharts. My intent was to make the interface

in a different way.

The flowcharts are not part of the user interface (meaning the "end user" -
the one who runs the report and benefits from its output). They are a
programming tool for the developer of the report, letting him to create the
report logic without actually coding it in a programming language, and
without knowing much of SQL.

Anyway, good luck with your exercise.

AM

 

[Steven]

Well, the install froze up on me so I will not be able to play with

Scribe,

I wonder why it froze up. What OS did you try to install it on? And at what
point did it hung?

Sorry for the late reply, I did not see this message until now ... I
switched from Outlook Express to free agent and am trying to catch up
to where I was and what do my wandering eyes see ... another post.

I was attempting to install it on Windows XP Professional.
Unfortunately I no longer know where exactly ... it has been too long.

Thank you. "They" is actually us - Gestalt Corporation.

You're welcome.

There are probably more issues for a report generator to resolve, apart from
updating the databases (which, strictly speaking, would be outside of the
scope of the RG functionality). Things like e-mailing the reports,
publishing them over the Web, cascading them in a drill-down sequence,
running them in the background as a separate process, scheduling them for
automatic execution - to name just a few.

Most of these issues are not simple, but a more straight forward
implementation from where my application was. I don't intend to cover
email or web in my first version, although HTML would just be another
output driver that I could support.

in a different way.

The flowcharts are not part of the user interface (meaning the "end user" -
the one who runs the report and benefits from its output). They are a
programming tool for the developer of the report, letting him to create the
report logic without actually coding it in a programming language, and
without knowing much of SQL.

I did the same thing in my application. I created a "database"
definition for the developer to create. Once created by the developer
the database definition can be saved and used to create the reports.
Although I didn't use flowcharts in my initial version I did make a
similar separation of logic.

Anyway, good luck with your exercise.

AM

Thanks again. Right now I am trying to internalize the MVC pattern. So
I am going slow on my code. Still trying to figure out what I want to
keep and what I need to rewrite. I don't expect to be any competition
to you in the forseeable future, but hopefully someday I will have
something interesting.

--Steve