We are using BIRT to create PDF-files from our website, but now we need to change the PDFs to meet the accessibility demands. I have tried to search for an answer how to make accessible tagged PDF with BIRT, but haven't found any answer. Even this https://www.eclipse.org/birt/ documentation doesn't talk about accessibility nor making tagged PDF.
So is it possible to add tags with BIRT or do we need to change BIRT to some completely different tool? If we need to change the tool, I would much appreciate info about tool which we could use. We have quite many PDF templates created with BIRT and all need to be changed to meet the accessibility demands.
With the Open Source version of BIRT, creating tagged PDFs is not possible AFAIK.
However, in a BIRT IDE built from source, it looks as if development in this direction started (IIRC there were "PDF Tag" properties in the advanced properties).
Maybe the commercial BIRT version from OpenText can generate tagged PDFs - I don't know and I would really appreciate more info about this topic from the BIRT project.
Edit: According to http://otadocs.opentext.com/documentation/ihub3/help/adg/adg24/index.html#page/ADG/DesigningReport.1.03.html#, this should be possible with the commercial version.
I would like to migrate the reports from crystal reports to any free reporting tools. However, I don't want to rewrite the report in the new reporting tool. Are there any reporting tools which can read the crystal report files?
Is there a specific reporting tool that you are interesting in migrating to. Crystal Reports is one of the better tools for pixel perfect layouts and products out there are generally not comparable in the rich features available in CR.
Having said that, there are a not many results showing up on basic search. You might want to share more on the the kind of reporting solution you are intending to move to e.g. Is the intended tool a web control/toolkit or standalone reporting solution with scheduling etc.
The only tool that I could find is Crystal Report to SSRS (Yes SSRS is not free but assuming you have sql server this is bundled in for many editions). http://www.crystalmigrater.com/Default.aspx
There is a free RPT file viewer from the vendor - http://www.crystalreports.com/crviewer-confirm
We have built our own reporting engine where we compile and fill jrxml's using Jasper Reports library.
Recently, we are planning to include HTML5 charts to our reports. Evaluated JasperStudio 6 professional and created a chart which uses highchart.
We need this jrxml containg highchart to be compiled and filled using jasper report library, but couldnt find any documentation where I can download jasperreport-pro jar files.
I installed JasperServer-pro and can see jasperreports-pro-6.0.0.jar in their WEB-INF/lib folder. But where can I download these libraries and use it standalone?
I went through https://community.jaspersoft.com/wiki/jars-required-compile-simple-jrxml-html5-element which explains which jars are needed. But they say 'shipped with pro JasperReports API' which I cannot locate to download and evaluate.
supposing that you are a paying customer, since HTML5 charts are PRO only, I highly suggest you to contact the Technical Support. They will provide you all the info.
Some details must be set, like property for license location and others related to HTML5 configuration.
Regards,
Massimo.
P.S: you could also try to open a ticket on the JasperReports tracker asking them to detail the linked wiki article.
is there a way to create a task/activity report (say a weekly report) off tasks managed with Mylyn? I've been using Rachota TimeTracker which allows me to create reports (in html format)
http://rachota.sourceforge.net/en/demo.html
I've just started using mylyn (our company uses Embarcadero JBuilder which is is based on Eclipse), but I don't see anywhere in the Eclipse or Embarcadero docs about reporting capabilities.
Is it possible? Is it possible to query activities worked on a prior week and report statistics out of it (management like reports, you know;) I'm sure it is, but I haven't been able to google it out.
Thanks.
You're in luck, Tasktop Pro (the supported version of Mylyn) has reporting. It allows you to:
View all task activity times for the previous day, week, and month
Manually adjust times as necessary to account for meetings and discussions
Submit your adjusted times, on tasks you select, to your task repository
Create reports in various formats
I'd recommend this short video which explains the reporting features in about 6 minutes.
David Shepherd
Tasktop Technologies
As you already know by now, the reporting functionality is included into commercial Tasktop product, which is developed by the same people who created Mylyn. So, obviously they are not interested to include some features into a free version. Now you have two options, either buy Tasktop, or develop your own extension for Mylyn. The task data is stored in reasonable simple xml file, so you not necessarily have to create an Eclipse plugin.
the reporting feature was stripped from the project when it used to be called mylar, in 2007, and since the project went commercial never came back to the open source mylyn for obvious reasons..
I found this simple perl script which outputs a pretty basic text only report, good enough for me.
http://rachaelandtom.info/mylyn-report
No takers? Not surprised since I can't find anything on the subject. For what's worth, there is an experimental task/activity report available for Mylyn with the sandbox jar. However, I could not get mine to work as I'm tied up with a JBuilder installation behind a firewall (and I can't download anything on the corp network that is not pre-evaluated... it sucks, I know.)
I'm going to have to experiment with the mylyn sandox at home, but it would be great if someone knows of an easier, more stable alternative.
We have been using .Net and Visual Studio for the last six years, and early on developed a number of web based reporting applications using the .Net version of Crystal Reports that was bundled with Visual Studio. I'm unimpressed with that product: It seems incredibly difficult and convoluted to use. We had to make security changes, install various extra software, and so on.
Now, we are moving to VS2008 and version 3.5 of the .Net framework, and the time has come to redevelop old applications. Our Crystal .Net developers are long gone and I face a decision: Do we stick with Crystal or move to something else? We have the "full" version of Crystal Reports XI at our disposal.
We produce PDF versions of data extracted from various databases. Some apps use the built-in Report Viewer but this seems redundant with the flexibility of grid views. We still need to produce printable PDFs in the grid or in a downloadable Excel format.
Is Crystal Reports .Net worth persisting with, or should we work out how to use version XI?
Alternatively is there a simple and low cost way to generate PDF reports without using Crystal?
I have experience with reporting in CrystalReports (trying lite version bundled with Visual Studio), ActiveReports from DataDynamics (4 years, full version), Reporting from Telerik (trying trial version) and XtraReports from DevExpress (last one year).
I think ( and not only me :) ), the CrystalReports are most uneficient tool ( developer productivity ) from this tools. The DataDynamics are much, much more better, bud is littlebit buggy :(. Last year we decided to change reporting suite - we have choosen a XtraReports ( with source code ), and I'm totaly happy. The price is little, no bugs ( to now :) ), wonderfull support, and ( the most important ) the productivity was grown a lot.
I recomend you DevExpress's or Telerik's reporting tools.
I would recommended i-net Clear Reports (used to be i-net Crystal-Clear). It can read your existing *.rpt files. Has a better and easier-to-use API (which I admit is not saying much...).
Like you, I've had poor experiences with Crystal Reports, and my gut instinct is to post "avoid it at all costs" in all caps with lots of exclamation points. However, I've had my afternoon nap today, so I'll post like a grownup.
If all you're looking to do is pdf-ize (yes, it's a real word, damnit!) then you might look into some of the PDF widgets like ABCPDF and the like. It's relatively easy to pop a well-formatted web page into a PDF document and be done with it.
However, if you need tight report formatting, consider sticking with crystal reports -- you have a big investment and knowledge base in the technology. Or, alternately, you could switch to ActiveReports or SQL Server reporting services.
I guess the cost/benefit analysis is the cost of retraining your dev team, and investing in the new technologies.
Move away from CR: just get a good PDF generator and Excel engine for .NET, and feed those using your own database code. You can use all the powerful .NET features, including LINQ, without having to wrestle with the Crystal Reports runtime and its woefully inadequate documentation and support.
I can suggest that the built in Microsoft reporting framework works adequately. You can do local reports or MS SQL server based reports. There is a client control that displays reports and can export to formats such as pdf and Excel. Visual Studio can handle report design for the stack.
As far as if it is better than Crystal Reports, I'd say check it out and see if you like it any better or worse. I've worked with the Microsoft Report Viewer more than Crystal Reports but both seem to be fairly similar. Offhand, Crystal Reports seems to be a more advanced reporting tool but more complicated.
I'm not sure about how to utilize the Microsoft Report Viewer infrastructure outside of Visual Studio. If you are using Visual Studio it should all be available in there and you can follow the online help instructions for deploying the pieces for your servers to your servers.
I have used ActiveReports from DataDynamics and Crystal Reports. Of these two, I would recommend ActiveReports above Crystal based on ease of use and, more importantly, future maintenance.
We use Crystal in our shop too. We are currently on 8.5, which is way old and is no longer supported by SAP. We tried to upgrade to CRXI recently, which involved an entirely new API. We had to shelf the effort due to other priorities. While working on the upgrade I found support for CRXI on a number of forums. Google it.
I believe you can find a cheap way to generate PDFs without using Crystal. I believe Adobe gives the creation part away for free. I would visit their site and look into it.
I would recommend staying with Crystal only if you had a lot of reports that were already using that technology.
Get out of Crystal Reports. They are poor.
Check out SQL Reporting Services. It works very well with .NET. Try it out. There is a learning curve, but when is there not?
IMO, you should consider other criteria as well such as:
Cost of the software
Integration with your .NET applications
API and Programmatic flexibility (All said and done, there are always the "customizations" and tailoring. For such scenarios , developers eventually fall back on programmatic solutions vs. out of box
Now, in my experience (having used both Crystal Reports and SSRS(2005/2008) , though Crystal Reports does come with a friendly set of API, it fails in many basic criteria and developers end fighting the software. This is I say based on my experience with SSRS where developers are far more comfortable with. For starters, it uses XML extensively and the provision to use custom code assemblies does not harm either.
--I think you would where I am getting at---
"Consider & Evaluate SSRS*. If you are hesitant at first, then do a Proof of Concept and test your requirements. I have a feeling you will be pleased with what you see
especially considering your requirement of using PDF format.
Developers, especially , MSFT specialists will thank you
Leverage the Programmatic rendering of the reports (though it sounds fancy , trust me , its not more than handling an API call
For e.g.:
public Byte[] Render
(
string Report,
string Format,
string HistoryID,
string DeviceInfo,
[Namespace].ParameterValue[] Parameters,
[Namespace].DataSourceCredentials[] Credentials,
string ShowHideToggle,
out string Encoding,
out string MimeType,
out [Namespace].ParameterValue[] ParametersUsed,
out [Namespace].Warning[] Warnings
out string[] StreamIds);
Member of [Namespace].ReportingService
)
--- where Format will be "PDF"
Hope you find this relevant