XML.com has pointed out the release of JasperReports 2.0.0, "an open source (LGPL) Java library for generating reports from XML templates and customizable data sources (including JDBC). The output can be displayed on the screen, printed, or written to XML or PDF files. Version 2.0 introduces external style templates, an enhanced Excel exporter, and assorted bugfixes."

We are using JasperReports and work great for us. But stumble sometimes when user wants rich excel sheets to play with the data. Do you have any link, where I can find what enhancements they did .. Not able to find from http://jasperforge.org/sf/projects/jasperreports

Just wanted to point out that HQ enterprise has integrated JasperReports for the HQ Enterprise 3.1 release. You can find it here: http://www.hyperic.com/downloads/download-beta.do For integration purposes, Jasper was the simplest and made the most sense. -John Mark Community Manager Hyperic - http://www.hyperic.com/

Release notes are at http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=531993&group_id=36382 (Go to download the release, and they are linked from the download pages.)

To integrate Google Chart in Servoy is very easy. Google Chart web service returns a PNG Format Image in response to your Chart Query URL. So, you only have to build the Chart URL and parse the URL to get the media content returned. You can do that by using the HTTP Plug-in of Servoy, coming with your default Servoy Installation or you can simply render the returned the image in a HTML Area. Let's see how easy it is to get going with Google Chart in Servoy.

 

Let's start building a simple Pie Chart showing sales of a company for the months of Jan, Feb, Mar & Apr by using Google Chart API.

 A Google Chart API URL must be in the following format:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?<parameter 1>&<parameter 2>&<parameter n>

So, our Chart Query URL will be (You can see the Chart, just by clicking on the URL):

 

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=350x120&chd=t:20,35,20,25&cht=p3&chl=JAN|FEB|MAR|APR

 

The big problem we have with Jasper is that it is all very fixed: columns are fixed size, page is fixed size, etc. Jasper doesn't support adding/removing columns dynamically, change page size, auto size columns to content, etc. Does 2.0.0 change any of this?

The big problem we have with Jasper is that it is all very fixed: columns are fixed size, page is fixed size, etc. Jasper doesn't support adding/removing columns dynamically, change page size, auto size columns to content, etc. Does 2.0.0 change any of this?

I encountered a lot of problems exporting to excel format, in some cases, need to implement my own exporters to get around text wrapping problems etc. I don't really recommend using it for excel beyond simple reports. It is friendlier for PDF reports thou.

V 2.0.1 of JasperReports has enhancements that allow more friendly Excel output. Sherman Wood JasperSoft

The big problem we have with Jasper is that it is all very fixed: columns are fixed size, page is fixed size, etc. Jasper doesn't support adding/removing columns dynamically, change page size, auto size columns to content, etc.

You can solve this issue generating dynamically the .jrxml (using JSP for example). OpenXava uses this technique with JasperReport, and we can change the size of columns, page, or add and remove columns at runtime. Look at jasperReports.jsp.

The big problem we have with Jasper is that it is all very fixed: columns are fixed size, page is fixed size, etc. Jasper doesn't support adding/removing columns dynamically, change page size, auto size columns to content, etc. Does 2.0.0 change any of this?

Maybe DynamicJasper can help you add more dynamism to your java reports. It's an open source framework based on JasperReports that attacks all the points you mentioned and gives you a friendly API to develop reports straight from java language.

The aim of JasperReports is pixel perfect output across a variety of mediums, like HTML, PDF, Excel etc. You need to add an application around JasperReports in order to get any interactivity, which is what JasperServer http://jasperforge.org/sf/projects/jasperintelligence does. As noted elsewhere in this thread, a completely dynamic JasperReport requires generation of JRXML report templates. JasperSoft has commercial add-ons to JasperServer that provide an AJAX UI for designing reports on the fly. Sherman Wood JasperSoft

Nice work!Congratualations! It has been used in our projects successfully.

Very good for static templates. But when the template document must be variable, it is not very flexible: it presents too many limitations. But it is a very good software!

Back when I researched JasperReports, it still couldn't convert old Crystal Report .rpt files into something it could use and as a result, it was not an option for us. Another product called Crystal Clear can do this (but it's a whole other bag of shit for other reasons) so we went with that instead. If JasperReports could convert .rpt files into a version that it could use, it would be HUGE. I'm sure there's a lot of other companies out there using CR because they can't afford to start from scratch.

Automated conversion of .RPTs is against the Crystal EULA. It is a manual task to convert a .RPT design to .JRXML, but relatively easy. Sherman Wood JasperSoft

I'm in need of some help from you.

My company is seriously considering migrating from Crystal Reports to Jasper Reports.

Our major obstacle is the 900+ reports that we have already developed in Crystal and now need to try convert/migrate

As it stands we are already going to have to open each report with the crystal developer and then save it in the new format. 

So as far as we are concerned now would be the perfect time to migrate, as there is going to be some work involved regardless.

Does anyone have experience on BIRT and JasperReports? BIRT seems more powerful, but a little bit heavy for simple report.

Does anyone have experience on BIRT and JasperReports? BIRT seems more powerful, but a little bit heavy for simple report.

If your report is really simple, just use iText.

We did a fairly long evaluation of both, and found that in terms of report design and ease of use, BIRT was better, but if you include the benefits of the JasperServer, which gives you a not-perfect-but-reasonably-featurefull-given-the-free-pricetag framework for storing, scheduling, and delivering reports to the end-user in a wider variety of formats, then the time saved modifying the BIRT webapp yourself to get that was offset by the time spent getting Jasper reports to do what you want. And to the person who mentioned subreports were difficult, I agree they could be easier. To Sherman probably the best answer to your question about what is hard with subreports in Jasper is for you to install BIRT and design a subreport with it, and you'll see how it just seems to make more sense with BIRT. So if you need a wider variety of output formats and/or more advanced features than the BIRT webapp provides, go with Jasper. Otherwise go with BIRT.

I'm not very experienced in both engines. At latest project I need reporting engine for stricte www enviroment. Jasper generate very ugly and heavyweight HTML with many fixed-size bitmaps. BIRT is much better in www enviroment: producing good HTML with CSS styles etc. Maybe Jasper can be better with papper & PDF output. BIRT out-of-the-web has very strange runtime configuration with his-own Tomcat server.

We're using JasperReports (and iReport) in the LoopFuse product suite for generating reports throughout the product in different formats, outputting to browser, and emailing to predefined lists for disk. The documentation, samples, and forums were thorough enough for us to shorten the learning curve significantly and provide a powerful reporting framework for our users/customers. JasperReports fit very nicely in to our JSF-frontend/Hibernate-backend and the ability to quickly fire Quartz reporting tasks. I can't comment on competing OSS products, as we originally looked at Pentaho, but since their site and packaging is such a clusterfsk, we wrote them off. Roy Russo http://www.loopfuse.com

Does this fix subreports? Subreports are still a murky, awkward feature. Why does designing subreports have to be so hard?

They tend to get whacky in Crystal Reports and Crystal Clear too (maybe they work well now in CR).

A sub report is a report that can be called from another report, which can help with maintenance and design. Sub reports are supported in the iReport JasperReports designer, as are all JasperReports features. What particularly do you find murky, awkward and hard about sub reports? Is it the way you have to connect the master report to the sub report? Sherman Wood JasperSoft

What particularly do you find murky, awkward and hard about sub reports? Is it the way you have to connect the master report to the sub report?


Sherman Wood
JasperSoft

I like JasperReports and iReports. Thank god no more crazy xsl formatting. But if you are designing a 5 page report - not just a data dump with columns - designing the reports can be tricky. e.g. The maximum height for the detail band is about 700 or 800, if your report is longer than that, you need subreports - I think. Is there good documentation on designing a multipage report using subreports? Good strategies, like maybe chaining subreports, placing them in the summary?

Have not used JasperReports myself. Anyone here would please point to a Url comparing JasperReports and FOP?

Have not used JasperReports myself. Anyone here would please point to a Url comparing JasperReports and FOP?

Why? I know another OSS reporting tool that use to use FOP underneath but dumped it cause it was slow and had memory issues and PDF formating issues. So, if you want a good (design and output) and well performing and well supported tool and reporting engine then use JasperReports.

JasperReports is definitley a good project, no question about it. But alternatives are always a good thing in my book, so in that vein you might also consider DataVision (datavision.sourceforge.net). I've used it on a number of projects and have had great success with it. It's very simple to use, especially when you need to integrate into an existing application. If your using Struts2, there's also a plugin for it (http://cwiki.apache.org/S2PLUGINS/home.html) which can be very helpful (but DV is in no way dependant on S2). Just another choice, that's all. DV is offered under the ASL, which for some people is preferred over the GPL (or is it LGPL? Either way...) Jasper is offered under (In the interest of full disclosure, I am the current project lead of DV, but it's a project that's been around for a few years now, I've only relatively recently gotten involved)

How to use jasper reports with JSF? Basically I need to display some charts generated by Jasper into JSF. Jasper is exporting content to PDF/HTML... but how to display it in JSF page? Are there any tools to convert Crystal Reports(.rpts) to jasper reports?

With the recent release of JasperReport Plug-in, Now, you can directly add any fields, calculations(stored/un-stored), aggregations, global variables, related fields and many more, to your Jasper Report, as you are doing in  Servoy itself. You don't have write huge SQL Query for the same. Just pass your foundset to the report and access the fields, related fields from the JasperReport basing on the passed foundset. In this TIP, we will  know how we can add a Sub-Report to the Jasper Report and pass a Servoy Foundset to the SubReport.

To add a Sub-Report to your JasperReport at design time with IReport (IReport is the popular Jasper Report Designer tool), you can drag the Sub-Report element from the Element pallet of IReport, to the JasperReport. 

To do this we have to create a log table which will store all the data changes.
We can have fields like table_name, pk_value_of_the_record, field_name,old_value, new_value, modified_by_user_idx,modification_date,  etc..