JasperReports not mature yet....

[2002 JI Open Discussion]

By: Mohamed Kreifeur - moh2100

JasperReports not mature yet....

2003-11-06 18:54

Hi every one

I think Jasperreport is not mature yet, and It's impossible to do some reports specially with nested groups with calculation on subgoups fields (unless using some work-arounds). I have posted an example, in this forum, and even sent that to Teodor and I didn't get any response. After spending a lot of time using and testing jasperreports and I ended up with this conclusion.

I think there two or more features that must be added soon:

-Capability of calcution on subgroups fields (calculation on detail fields works fine). Using the same as 'Running totals for crystal report'

- Developing more usability of scriptlets (more classes in order to customise the calculation)

- Changing the order of events firing order. I think order used right now is WRONG and it does not let people doing calculation based on 'before' and 'aftergroupinit' event. You can see that with 3 group levels.

Ex:here is example of a report

g1---------sumOfA----sumOfB

--g2-------sumOfA----sumOfB

----g3-----------A----sumOfB

------detail-----------------B

 

The sumOfB is the SUM of filed 'B' and is donne very easy whereas the sumOfA is the SUM of the field 'A' that is not a detail field, it's group field. So the the sumOfA does not work (A value is repated for each deatail record) even using scriptlet.

When using Scriptlet, there is the problem of the order of group event execution (get fired) that is wrong (I think is wrong).

The event order is as follow, for the previous example:

begoreG1

--beforeG2

----beforeG3

----afterG3

--afterG2

afterG1

------detail

------detail

------....

----beforeG32

----afterG32

------detail

------detail

...etc

 

The right order is that the 'aftergroupinit' event must be fired after the ALL 'aftergroupinit' event of it's immediate subgoup NOT AFTER the first 'aftergroupinit' event. In the example the 'afterG2' must be later NOT just after 'afterG3'

The same for detail events must be fired within the 'beforgroupinit' event and 'aftergroupinit' event

 

Despite this lacks, Jasperreports still a great tool, thanks Teoder

 

Moh