is jasperReport suitable for my needs

[2002 JI Open Discussion]

By: Mairead Fagan - peggynelly

is jasperReport suitable for my needs

2002-08-08 02:27

Hi

I have been given the task of finding a reporting tool suitable for the project we are working on at the moment.The project uses EJBs,Oracle db and will be running on Linex.It is a web bades project that will rosrer nurses in a hospital setting.So the reporting tool will e.g list the nurses tht worked on a particular ward on a given date. etc.

Can anyone tell me is this tool suitable.As i am a junior programmer my knowledge is limited.

Thank u

Mairead

 

 

 

 

By: Muralidhar bp - pmurli

RE: is jasperReport suitable for my needs

2003-03-02 21:52

Hi,

 

Jasper is a very power tool which u can use it for your web applications.

It is very flexible tool, where in u can generate reports in html, pdf, xl.........

 

Rgds

Murli

 

 

 

 

By: Rajan Karunakaran - rkaran

RE: is jasperReport suitable for my needs

2003-03-02 23:00

Unless you specifically want to create pdf, xls, csv, etc. you will not necessarily need JasperReports. In the EJB setting, Apache Cocoon is a pretty good framework for producing reports using XML. Also, it might be worthwhile looking into Oracle's XSU (XML SQL Utility) to retrieve your query result set from the Oracle database. This xml result set can then be transformed into various formats and file types, including pdf, xls, csv, etc. Of course this route may not necessarily require the use of JasperReports.

 

I find JasperReports to be pretty good if you aren't using Cocoon or an EJB framework. Also the learning curve is not too bad. Using cocoon, you would definitely have to learn how to create style sheets to transform XML resultsets into other forms. If you are new to XML, this can be a particularly painful experience, especially if you are in a crunch for time.

 

JasperReports, on the other hand will have you up and running with a report in a day or two. Once you have learnt to lay out your report on grids, you will realise that it is pretty easy to build the xml file that JasperReports uses.

 

 

 

 

By: Brett - bsutton

RE: is jasperReport suitable for my needs

2003-03-03 14:47

rkaran, I'm interested in your comments in comparing cocoon to jasper.

Assume a developer is equally experience in both products which yeilds the best productivity?

Are their any other benefits to using cocoon as a report writer over the likes of jasper?

 

 

 

 

 

By: Brett - bsutton

RE: is jasperReport suitable for my needs

2003-03-04 00:01

rkaran, I'm interested in your comments in comparing cocoon to jasper.

Assume a developer is equally experience in both products which yeilds the best productivity?

Are their any other benefits to using cocoon as a report writer over the likes of jasper?

 

 

 

 

 

By: Rajan Karunakaran - rkaran

RE: is jasperReport suitable for my needs

2003-03-09 10:44

Cocoon is a framework that works in the servlet space. I would imagine that if a developer is well versed in both, he would use them interchangeably depending on the application he is developing.

 

JasperReports has the advantage that it works in Swing app/standalone GUI-less space as well as the web app/servlet space equally. JasperReports generally requires only the single XML file which provides the definition for layout.

 

Cocoon on the other hand uses some of the newer emerging XML technolgies. It is designed to use xsl transformations. So you would have to retrieve your database query result sets as xml data, create a set of xsl stylesheets for transforming the said result set into HTML, XLS, CSV, PDF, etc. There is huge amount of technologies at play there.

 

For someone who is new to programming, I would say JasperReports is the way to go. You create only one xml file (and that too, a file similar in many respects to HTML) and the reporting engine does most of the magic. And as you learn about servlet programming, swing, etc., you can enhance your app with the same reporting engine, though in the interest of good design practices, I would provide a wrapper around it an isolate it from the rest of your code with a proper interface.

 

Cocoon on the other hand requires you to have at least a reasonably good knowledge of servlets, the cocoon architecture, XML, XSLT, XSL:FO, etc. xsl itself, is a programming language and is not exactly trivial to learn.

 

So, as you can see each has its uses, levels of complexity and strengths. And my guess is that a developer with reasonably good experience in both would use both interchangeably when he feels that one would be better in a situation than another. I personally gravitate towards JasperReports since my xsl skills are in the 'emerging' phase.

 

My colleagues use Cocoon extensively and my boss who is some kind of a wunderkind swears by it and has found a reporter engine that is based off Cocoon called XReporter. It is still under development and he works off the source code in the project CVS repository at the moment since documentation is sketchy at best. Even if Xreporter takes off in a big way, I doubt it will be able to replace JasperReports completely (because of Cocoon's reliance on the servlet space).

 

In all honesty, I would like to components/packages developed that can be used across different UI choices and I think JasperReports does that reasonably well. (though, I must admit, I recently I ran into trouble when compiling a report in Tomcat and JBoss. JBoss eventually helped me pinpoint the problem, which involved the JDK being used to compile the report. I haven't returned to finish it off yet, as I have been swamped with database work, which is my main sphere of expertise).