I want to create reports in PDF using the data available in database. I want to do some data manipulation and use the charts and details to be shown in pdf to the user.Suppose say there are 2 columns in DB a and b . I want to show in the PDF, the value of a and b and the addition of a and b. What i can use to generate this pdf report?
I thought of using jasper, but i donot want to use it. Instead is there any other logic in java that can help to solve this problem. Please suggest with examples.
Thanks
Birt is a tool that can be used to generate all sorts of reports. There are plugins for Eclipse that you can use to help you get going and you can definitely add logic in Java. It can output your report in multiple formats including PDF, HTML, and I believe even Word docs.
If you've used Eclipse before you should be able to figure out the basics, but it can get as complicated as you want. In its simplest form you attach data sources (such as a database with a JDBC connection) and you structure your joins and layout fields onto a form. You can even tie it into a Java EE container if needed.
There are examples on their website and it has a rather large community to help with questions.
is it possible to fill a predefined template file via birt reporting?
.xls for exmaple: The template should have defined the column headers (nicly formatted) and some other stuff like the date of creation, the user, some legal notice, ...
.pdf on the other hand should define id-fields that are to be filled with data
.ppt as the last and may be trickiest one should ideally be also be useable as .pdf but as far as I know .ppt itself does not provide IDs for its fields and therefore a workaround must be used to identify the places to be filled
Are there alternatives to birt that might be able to do that?
I'm very curious about the answers :-)
Thanks a lot!
Templater supports docx and xlsx. From there we are generating PDFs using LibreOffice.
Being author of the tool, I highly recommend it :)
There are plenty of examples on site if you are interested.
It could be very challenging to hit a predifined Excle format with the native BIRT Excel emitter, there are several after market Excel emitters that might help you get there.
The easier way is to set up your BIRT report to export with the format you want, then save report and use it as foundation for recreating the next report. You can use grids, and master pages to get just the layout you want, then plug in report pieces.
You can also use the library to save grids, tables & data sets that you use over and over.
The Spudsoft XLS Emitter for BIRT (which is builtin with BIRT 4.3.1) supports this for XLS.
We are using this feature and it works like a charm.
However, BIRT does not support "filling" doc or ppt docs.
Templating engines usually have difficulties to support master-detail (or master-detail-detail) relationships. This is due to the somewhat stupid implementation of tables in MS Word.
I need some input if this is possible.
I guess most of you who have used JasperReports use it to - obviously - generate reports.
My question is, can you use it to generate generic documents? Ergo, documents that AREN'T reports. Say, for example, an automated letter of authority with fields you can just populate at run time. Or a company form that is filled up by your app then generates a pdf using JasperReports.
The only other solution that came up was iText, which I believe is far more capable of achieving the desired output.
Any inputs would be appreciated. Thanks.
You could, but I wouldn't--IMO you're better off using raw iText, or one of the dynamic languge PDF generators. IIRC iText can fill in PDF forms, too, so if you have someone else creating the PDFs, they can just be populated via iText.
OTOH, if they're relatively simple, it probably doesn't matter very much--you can pass non-tabular data to JR, I'm just not sure it's any easier that way.
I do all kinds of elaborate reports with iReport. It is an amazing designer for JasperReports. It allows to drag and drop components and connect to your DB or JavaBean Datasources with wizards. A very mature application that gives you all sorts of report exporting capabilities.
With iText you can do anything. But it is a programming API and so you either have to create your own design tool or construct the reports in code. For something simple or that will rarely change, it works well.
If you want a full-blown docgen solution, you need a product like Document Science, Thunderhead, or Windward Docgen (disclaimer, I'm the CTO at Windward). The beauty of these solutions is you design templates (in the case of Windward you design in Word) that are then passed to the system so it does not require programming to create/revise a document. And they output to pretty much any format.
Ok, So I have to generate very complex reports from my DB.
If I am to do it with SQL the query themselves will be complex, and I will have to do some more manipulation on the results later, code level.
How do libraries like Jasper Reports/ Crystal Reports and friends save me time when developing such reports?
What will they give me?
These tools may not necessarily save you that much time writing the SQL, but they will give you a nice clean presentation of the data for your customers.
When it comes to writing the query, they won't give you much. Some of the Business Intelligence tools out there (although none of the open source ones I know of) give you infrastructure for point and click queries. A developer still has to do the hard work of setting them up, especially for complex queries, to provide a view of the data that is simple enough for the user.
What these tools do give you is an engine to take care of a lot of the presentation issues, such as formatting, page breaks, converting to multiple formats (HTML, PDF, etc), running, storing and retrieving the reports and other things in that area.
What ever tool you are using to generate reports, you got to write your complex SQL or define the views out of your data to generate the reports. The benefit of using the tools is
Can generate multiple type of report formats (PDF, EXCEL, TEXT..)
Eliminates a lot of routine chores like setting date/time stamps, header formatting..
Maintains consistency across multiple report pages which is generally a bit hard to acheive
Creates a template layout which can be reused and some fancy functions like sub reports and easy type conversions in some cases..
etc...
If I am to do it with SQL the query themselves will be complex, and I will have to do some more manipulation on the results later, code level.
Jasper could be very effective in manipulating the data before/during generating the report. By design, every variable, parameter or field in JasperReports could be a Java expression, imagine the possibilities.
How do libraries like Jasper Reports/ Crystal Reports and friends save me time when developing such reports?
Both Jasper and Crystal give you the ability to extract the fields from the query, Jasper also gives you abilities like extracting fields from XML or JavaBeans. (i dont know about Crystal)
What will they give me?
Those two are very good tools for making reports, i have made very complicated reports on Jasper, so the tools themselves are very advanced, its how you will use them that counts.
As others have said, what these tools give you is an link between your data and how you want to display it - be that a listing, chart, cross tab (grid of summarized values) etc, with options for your own parameters, calculations and queries.
If you are embedding your reports in your application, I'd say your selection of a reporting platform gets down to what technology are you comfortable with. For Microsoft, look at Crystal. For Java, look at JasperReports and iReport.
JasperReports does have sub reports.
Sherman
Jaspersoft (company behind JasperReports)
If you mean complex as in the data and manipulation, then code-level systems like Jasper and Docmosis will let you manipulate the data in code as well as in the query. You can combine the best of SQL with the best of code algorithms to get your report data ready. This will save you time if maintaining simple SQL + simple code is better in your environment than maintaining complex SQL.
It depends on your company and your skills. If you're in a small environment where you control everything, have access to anything, can download and install whatever you want, and you are a programmer and Reporting is more of an annoyance, Jasper has a lot of options. You need to do the hard work yourself, but you have the capabilities to do it.
But if you are in a company, like many people are, where the DBA controls the database, the SysAdmin controls the servers, you can't download and install whatever you want, things need to be checked in, tested, approved, etc, Reporting is something people need now, not after you figure out a way to code something that Jasper Doesn't offer, and your job is more a part of Reporting and Analysis over programming, then Jasper is a horrible tool.
Plus, like it or not, the other tools have far more support and help. Jasper is a bit useless when it comes to simple help. Search all the Jasper Forums. Look at any other forum about Jasper. Most questions go unanswered. And if you post something, it's very likely your question will never be answered. Or the answer isn't close to what you need.
It's a double edged sword. Jasper gives you a lot of freedom, but a lot of it is a bad tool to use for the real corporate world. Unless you have a job where you don't do much all day, Jasper takes too long for simple things to get done. If it's about getting reports to the right people at the right time, stay away from Jasper. Nobody really has the time or understanding to sit and figure out a work around and write up some code if a report needs to be done yesterday. End users don't care. It's the age old problem. It's built for techies, not for users. And the Reporting world is more about the users than the techies.
It's hard to say with the not so detailed info you provided, but I have 14 years experience with Crystal Reports and can tell you that it's very powerful. You can manipulate the resulting dataset in Crystal Reports in many ways. Crystal Report has a very decent internal program language to do this. And then you'll have subreports, which will save your day if it get hard.
I never found a report builder that can math Crystal Reports, especially looking at it's low price. If money isn't the problem then you can also look at List & Labels, www.combit.net.
One major thing Crystal Reports gives you is the ability to do Subreports--that is, multiple, related queries that return nested result sets. This can really simplify the individual queries your write. Take a look at http://vb.net-informations.com/crystal-report/vb.net_crystal_report_subreport.htm
I have a simple task that I feel there has to be an app out there for (or is easy to build or extend an open-source version).
I need to run a mysql query repeatedly and look for changes in the results between runs (the data is coming in in real time).
I have built several of these queries and throughout the day find myself jumping between tabs in my mysql client running them, and trying to see what has changed. This becomes difficult as there are hundreds of rows of data and you can't remember the previous values easily.
Ideally I could have a simple app (or web app) that stores the query, and refreshes over and over again. As the data is filled into the table it could compare the old results and change the color to red or green (or something).
I would need sorting, and simple filtering (possibly with string replaces into the query based on the inputs.
We run Ubuntu at work and I have tried doing this via terminal scripts (we use Ruby), but I feel a more-visual output would give me better results.
Googling around I see several for-pay apps, but there has to be something out there to do this.
I don't mind coding one up, but I don't like to re-invent the wheel if I don't have to.
Many thanks!
For simple things like this you are not reinventing the wheel as much as making your own sandwich -- some things don't make much sense to buy. Just build the simplest web page possible (e.g. a table with the table names you are interested in and maybe a timestamp for the last time it was checked. Have some javascipt run your query and color the cells based on the change you are looking for...repeating this operation as needed. I could give you more specific info if you can tell me how the data changes...more entries into a table? Updates to existing data?
I often use JDBC servlets via Tomcat for this. Here's an excellent tutorial and a very simple example.
I've done something similar in the past using Excel. Just build a connected spreadsheet, make your queries and the result will be outputed to Excel, then you format the way you like it. Very flexible, and if you need some kind of logic beyond the query itself, there are always Excel's built in functions and VBA.
Here is a useful link to help you. It is very simple:
http://port25.technet.com/archive/2007/04/10/connecting-office-applications-to-mysql-and-postgresql-via-odbc.aspx