New to Jaspersoft and Need help picking what software

[adam_7]

Hello All,

My company is a small company that uses an application running on SQL Server 2008 and the application itself has some built in reporting. The owners of my company are looking for custom reporting options outside of what is being offered by the application vendor. At first I thought I would simply use SQL reporting services, but it appears that Reporting Services was never installed with the appliclation and due to my limited knowledge of SQL I am hesitant to start messing with our production server.

I have created some reports in Excel and the owners are happy, but i would like to look into some sort of reporing package where the end users can easily access and change reporting criteria when they like. Right now with the Excel Reports, i am stuck editing and changing the reports when the owners want to look at a different date range. I would also like to create some scheduled reports that can be emailed.

Right now i am looking at some community projects in the hopes of keeping the inital costs low. I have experminted with installing Japser Server and Jasper iReport on a WIndows XP machine but i keep running into some issues. The JasperServer version does not seem to include a very robust report designer and I cannot get iReport to connect to my database.

I was hoping the community could give me some guidance on which path I should go down.

Any help or information is greatly appreciated.

[pawelkosi]

Hi Adam,

I was in your shoes about a month ago. I am still learning but I am making steady progress.

First of all be prepared that you will have to brush up on your SQL, Java and JavaScript. If you will want to present beautiful graphs, tables charst etc online then you will also need some understanding of HTML5 and CSS.

Best solution for start is getting JasperReports Server through Amazon AWS (you pay per hour and only for what you use) the cheapest option is around $380 for month (if you used the server 24/h at 100% capacity which lets face it wont happen when you are only testing). It is also good idea that you use Amazon RDS for your testing database, the smallest DB server is free - with some restrictions. Unless you have really robust dedicated server that holds your database at work I would use external service.

When you get your JasperReports Server through AWS you will also get licences for commercial versions of the development software - iReports and JasperSoft Studio. Community versions of the software lack certain important features. In addition with comercial option you get access to more training material - its not great, and I have already submited changes to the manual myself but it is still better than nothing and gives you place to start.

Other suggestion is, dont use iReports but download the JasperSoft Studio. iReports will be phased out and the JasperSoft Studio is the evoultion of the iReports.

The learning curve is quite steep, especially with the JasperSoft Studio but you will get the basics pretty quickly if you spend honest few hours a day learning and tring new things.

Most of the documenst you need are here on community portal, when you register for AWS you will get access to docs on the main website too. I suggest you read all the manuals first from cover to cover, they are still full of holes as I painfully learn but still give you a good base of understanding.

By the way, ask your boss to get you Windows 7 :) or if the PC is too old then ask him/her for replacement. JasperSoft Studio is already filled with bugs, I can only imagine that you will have more problems with it running it on dated OS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[adam_7]

I have Windows 7, I just pulled a freshly installed XP machine out of storage so I can test some of the software. Maybe I will purchase the software later, maybe I wont, but I dont plan on spending a $400 a month just to start evaluating a piece of software. Especially when you say that the paid for documentation is full of holes and their new reporting studio is full of bugs.

[pawelkosi]

Well, maybe I came across wrong - the software is still great and I haven't found anything better on-line. Bugs are not show-stoppers at all and the documentation assumes a lot, this is what I mean by holes. JasperSoft Studio is new (from what I understand and read) and you have to forgive it few things. I spend around 8h a day now testing and evaluating this software and my bill came to around $70 which is not bad (if you wont sleep, eat and do pretty much anything else but hang on the server then yes you would pay $400). If you want to have something good you have to pay, I have pretty much accepted that. Once you get over the hurdle of creating report the end user (as in your client, boss, people from the board) do not need to know anything about JasperSoft to be able to manipulate the data on the fly as they see fit. If you are strong coder you can try to build something yourself but I tried that approach and the time investment would be too massive for what I need for now. And to finish, I am just another user and I tried to answer your question the best I could looking at my own example. No need to be hostile. I am not telling you what to do, I am telling you what you MAY do. I am sure you are big enough to make your own mind up.

regards

Pawel

[abroitman]

Thanks Paul.

 

Another important note. While Jaspersoft on AWS is the cheapest option for pay-as-you-go BI that is great for either development or production environments. For evaluation only, we do offer free ways to play with the software. Simply go here: https://www.jaspersoft.com/jaspersoft-business-intelligence-software-trial and you can find all the ways you can try out the software before committing on purchase, including our cloud AWS by the hour.

[Nikhilesh_1]

Hi Adam,

 

I have certain basic stuff on Jaspersoft, iReport and some blogs which I have written which talks about the basic differences between jaspersoft different versions in terms of its capabilities.

Let me know of your email id and I will mail you the details.

 

Thanks

Nikhilesh

nikhilesh@helicaltech.com