Jaspersoft Studio leverages TIBCO GeoAnalytics Maps to produce data-rich maps. This section describes their set-up and configuration, including:

In addition to the other types of map component that Jaspersoft Studio supports, TIBCO GeoAnalytics Maps are also supported. These multi-layer maps are designed for use in interactive web environments, and support both markers and paths. They also support the ability to provide a street address and resolve it to the correct latitude and longitude (sometimes called geolocation).

Because these components download content from either TIBCO's service or from Google Maps, they require a connection to the Internet. While the maps themselves are freely available, using the GeoAnalytics geolocation serve to resolve street addresses requires an additional license.

The map component consists of three layers: a map, a set of paths, and a set of markers. The lowest layer contains the map itself, rendered by your choice of providers: TIBCO Maps or Google Maps. In both cases, the image is formed of tiles retrieved from a remote server. The next two layers (first paths then markers) can contain paths and markers or shapes.

Basic structure of the TIBCO GeoAnalytics Map component

Configuring a Basic Map

To create a TIBCO Map component:

1.

First locate the component in the Palette; it uses this icon:

At a minimum, the TIBCO Map component requires the location of the area to display, which can be defined by these manually-exclusive options:

TIBCO Map Attributes

Map attributes determine how the map layer of the component is rendered. The attributes are all optional:

Using Expressions for Properties

The simplest way to define the map layer's properties is to set them to static values; however, this is a much more limited approach than using expressions to pass parameters to the component dynamically, which allows you to evaluate data in your data set and use the results to populate the map layer's properties. If you don't specify a different data set, the component uses the main dataset of the report. In the components properties, properties based on expressions are indicated by displaying f(x) next to the field, as shown below.

Map properties showing Zoom defined by an expression

To specify a different dataset to resolve the map attributes based on expressions, click the Use Dataset check box to select it, and select the dataset to use in the Dataset Run.

Defining the Dataset to use to resolve map attribute expressions

Data Runs are used throughout Jaspersoft Studio and its related products when a report includes a subdataset. Use a Data Run to define values for the subdataset's parameters.

Understanding Layers

Each layer in the map component controls different aspects of the final map rendered in your report:

Each layer can be named uniquely; these names can be displayed in the JasperReports Server interactive report viewer in the Layers drop down; this allows your user to select which layers to drawn.

Layer names defined in the component can control the layers drawn in the final report

Working with Markers

Markers are points rendered on the second layer of the TIBCO Map component.

This section describes:

Static Markers

Defining a map's markers

Jaspersoft doesn't currently support loading an image directly from the repository, or as a resource local to the report.

The location can be set by latitude/longitude coordinates or an address to be geolocated, as described above.

A map with a marker

Marker properties set to a static location

This is a simplified example; the more common scenario is to read location data from the database.

Dynamic Markers

The steps above define the marker as a static address known when the report was created. But it is far more useful to dynamically define the markers based on locations defined in your report's data. A single map can use both static and dynamic markers, and locations can be based on data from more than one data source.

Since the data set includes both street addresses and latitude/longitude pairs, we can explore both functions.

To use dynamic locations:

We can use this new dataset to set markers on the map.

The dataset is added to the list of datasets we'll use for markers.

Location values defined as expressions

This example uses an icon from the web: Pink Push Pin.

San Francisco City College facilities marked on a map

Working with Paths

Paths are lines rendered on the third layer of the TIBCO Map component. A path is defined by:

To define a path in Jaspersoft Studio:

Style properties can be added manually or by specifying a dataset. The style name sets the style property when adding points to the path.

Like styles, points can be added manually or by using a specific dataset. Pay close attention when adding points: they are connected on the map in the order that they are declared in the JRXML file. If they aren't declared in a sensible order, the path won't make sense, either.