Hi
I've gotten OpenReports to work, very nice web interface. The log4j error
isn't severe enough to stop it working, only throws an exception when
starting up, but will write to your jboss log. I haven't gotten BIRT or
Jasper to work on it, although it can display both of these. Using the
QueryReports if very quick to get reports to work but also limiting - things
like total / aggregate rows tend to be a pain. Nice thing of QueryReports is
that it will display any stored proc's / query's result without you having
to specify anything. Downside to this is that it takes away the power of
post-processing the results, ie making negative vaules appear in red.
Drilldown is also another problem area - the free version doesn't support it
and the professional version only passing of one parameter. You end up
creating queries to build up a column that you need to use to drill down
with - FYI the drilldown also breaks the forward / back function of your
browser.
On the up side, once it is deployed, it is very easy to add new reports via
the web interface. Haven't had it crash once yet, although it will give the
PermGen mem space error in JBoss if you try to deploy it more than once
without restarting JBoss. User management also very easy, a report belongs
to a group and so does a user. You can also expand OpenReports without a lot
of effort to include extra user attributes, ie by default it has an external
user id which you can pass into a stored proc using
$P{OPENREPORTS_USER_EXTERNALID} to use as addional options linked to a
specific user which they cannot change, like their departmentId. On this
note, once you have the stored proc / query ready, you add it with a couple
of clicks and text like "sp_testproc $P{user_id}, $P{transaction_type_id}".
If you spend a bit of time expanding the ant build system, you can get it to
a point where you would compile OpenReports, dump it, create / populate the
OpenReports db and run all needed queries on the target db. I've gotten it
to a point where you can deploy the whole system in 5 minutes (excluding
uploading of the war file, about 30MB). Also great if you want to do batch
report deployments, you run one script on your OpenReports db to create /
modify reports / parameters and another to update any stored procs on the
target db.
I would suggest that you give OpenReports a go if you need a solution where
you want to spend most of your time writing the queries and not on making
the data display. Just be prepared to have to find your own solutions, the
forums are not very helpful, but once you get past the initial learning
curve it is easy to work with. The problem I had with most reporting tools
is that you spend a lot of time writing the query and then creating the
report only to have the required data change. With QueryReports, you only
need to update your query and the output report will be updated (barring any
parameter changes of course, just need to add those). I have not looked at
any BI properties at all.
Hope this helps.
Cobus Bernard
On 16/09/2007, Soren Aalto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I'm at a fairly high pain point here with the volume of MIS/reporting
> requests and how we (don't) handle them through ad-hoc means.
>
> Currently we have a couple of people who do SQL queries...mostly
> using a JSP tool I wrote (kind of the same as Oracle isqlplus which
> our vendor removed from our system to keep us from knowing too
> much). Anything that isn't doable in a single query is
>
> - pieced together by hand
> - somebody writes an adhoc program.
>
> A problem is that "somebody" is now me -- mostly writing stuff
> in Groovy/Groovlets/GSP, some JSP stuff, some Jython as well.
> We migrated from an in-house system to a 3rd party admin
> system (Student records/Finance/HR...) about 18 months ago
> and our former Natural/Adabas developers are no longer functioning
> programmers. I'm trying to push everybody in the Java (+ JVM
> scripting languages a la Groovy) direction, but it's a slow process/steep
> learning curve, far removed from Natural/Adabas...
>
> I realise we need help -- primarily on the Reporting/BI front, and
> also on the programming front...but I also want to try and stay with
> an OSS/web friendly technology strategy here.
>
> Does anybody out there have experience with OSS stuff like
> Jaspersoft/Jasper
> Reports and/or Eclipse/BIRT? I looked at these things long ago and
> wasn't convinced they'd help because the focus seemed mainly to be
> on presentation/reporting, but the thing that attracts me is the web
> viewers
> that would allow our staff to publish reports on the web easily.
>
> I also looked at OpenReports, which looked promising, but I didn't get
> it working...some issues with log4j. And I've seen Pentaho...but that's
> about it.
>
> I'm mostly interested in:
>
> 1) a decent OSS solution for reporting and/or BI that publishes
> stuff on the web easily, or
> 2) good reasons why I shouldn't look at (1) (like, you have tried to
> go this route and have ended up going with a commercial solution
> like Cognos...Microsoft Dynamics/Navision/whatever they call it
> now...Crystal Reports...Discoverer?)
> 3) Anybody who does consulting in this line who also could shore
> up our not-really-happening Java/Web/OSS friendly strategy.
>
> I'm posting this on a JUG list on the other side of the country -- because
> I haven't been able to see any life on Dbnjug and...I just tried again
> and the SAJUG website isn't there. CTJUG is the only JUG with any
> mail traffic in the country.
>
> --
> Soren Aalto
> Director: ICT
> University of Zululand
> >
>
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