I'm currently evaluating the main FOSS report generators. One of the features I'm looking for is the ability to manipulate the presentation of data when the report is presented on the browser:
Resort the results
Reorder columns
Regroup the results
Filter the data
The idea is to let the users play with the results presented to them, without having to create a new report or modify the underlying query. So:
Does any of the FOSS versions support such features? (I know some commercial versions do, but at this point it's not what I'm looking for)
If (#1 == false), are there any side open-source projects that provide such features?
Would love to get answers regarding either BIRT, JasperReport of Pentaho.
Actually. I did some similar research and couldn't find any software doing true ad hoc reports. OpenReports used to be a good enough thing, but it seems discontinued. What Jasper and birt report servers offer (in the oss version) is more of a reporting template repository and some scheduling / automatic reports. For the ad hoc features you have to get the paid version.
BIRT has a community edition simple report server sample called BIRT Runtime that you can deploy on Tomcat.
However as a web application, its functionality is not comparable to JasperReports Server.
Actuate however, does provide a flagship commercial BIRT Report Server.
OpenReports have some ajax functionalities on web reporting. I am pretty sure that you can use JSF + Jasper Reports to generate a dynamic web report as well.
hope this helps
Related
We will be migrating from BO 3.1 to BO 4.1.
It is proposed to manually schedule, save and compare reports from both environments then manually compare them. Surely all this can be automated?
Specifically, can we automate:
The scheduling and exporting of reports to a single network folder.
Comparing reports of different formats, i.e. Word, Excel, PDF, etc.
You can create report publications in each system to generate the reports to a folder and if they are generated as PDF's you could then use document comparison software, we use Compare Docs from Docs Corp for PDF and DOC comparisons.
We went through an upgrade of XIr2 to XI3.1 a few years back, as our finance team where the majority users of the reporting system we had them identify their top reports and focused on them, running the report in the two systems at the same time as we have some reports using a data warehouse and some using SQL and some queries ran even a couple minutes apart would affect the results. We then manually compared the reports.
You can use the BI Platform SDK to schedule reports--the link references a REST SDK, but there are COM and SOAP ones too.
In 4.0, you can use WebI's REST SDK to export the report's data; In 3.x, you need to use the COM SDK. There might also be a Java version.
If you want to mitigate the risk linked to manual or partial testing you can use 360bind designed only for Business Objects report testing going down to pixel level while comparing images.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
We are moving towards client-side front-end development and wants to use AngularJS for it, I want to know is there any way we could use our crystal reports with AngularJS with it.
Our Server-side is ASP.Net webapi/ MS SQL Server.
It would be lovely if we can use our existing crystal reports, if at all its not possible to use crystal reports, then some experts kindly let us know what would be the other best solution for reporting with a framework like AngularJS.
Thanks and best regards
PS: Its amazing there are so many client-side framework but no reporting framework.
Disclaimer: I work for STOIC
I don't know any integration with Crystal Report built with AngularJS. But if you need a reporting solution built on top of AngularJS, you might want to take a look at STOIC, especially the View Editor component.
I feel that to thoroughly answer your question, we must define what is meant by "reporting." In terms of Crystal Reports, the basic functionality is to prompt the user with a form to enter their parameters for filtering the report, then a view is displayed with the data presented in some layout, usually a data grid, more than one data grid, some charts or graphs, or a combination of all of the above. There are features to drill-down into detail or different sub-reports, to group rows with additional content inserted inline, to affect your data model with code, aka "formulas," and also to modify your query results, using formulas without, actually writing any SQL. Reports can embed Flash, HTML, Java applets, and Silverlight. Reports can be faithfully exported to various formats, namely PDF, Excel, CSV, and Word. The basic functionality of Crystal also allows defining data structures for report exportation, such as XML structured via XSLT. There are SDKs for Java and .Net, and a Javascript API. Reports can be embedded into webpages, rendered inline using javascript, and embedded into Java or .Net applications with a license that allows free distribution. That's just scraping the surface of the feature set, and not even touching the other server platform products offered by SAP, Inc.
Now, if you can do without some of those features, or pick and choose, your options open up greatly. I imagine there are some frameworks out there that support Crystal's entire feature set, but I find the terms to be misleading, and quite often, they're just loaded marketing phrases; for instance, "reports" is often referred to as "views", "grids" or "datagrids" in other frameworks. If you need a canned solution that automatically provides the entire featureset, I think Crystal would be your best bet, and their Javascript API will allow you to display them in a webpage.
There are a few ways I know of but they require Crystal Enterprise Server, or SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence suite, or $$
With Enterprise Server you publish all of your reports which allow you to call them via URL with the parameters. This link/url will generate an enterprise viewer in the browser that initiates the crystal report call.
With BusinessObjects there is also a JavaScript API which essentially does the same thing except you can customize and embed the tools, (I haven't used this before) but still $$
https://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/boexir4/en/xi4_cr_js_api_en.pdf
Last option is purchase 3rd party like ReCrystalize, but that you have to install on your webserver and runs about 1k bucks.
AngularJS is just a javascript binding framework. Unrelated to server-side products such as Crystal Reports. In order to call initiate the reports from javascript, you need to call some api, or create a client side page like c# that calls the report on the server side.
You can also use a product called DreamFactory which calls an php service or another service which essentially does the same thing.
Hope this helps.
My employer is considering migrating our e1 reporting from crystal reports 10 to another solution.
I want to use jasper server and I was wondering if there is a standard migration path or standard report package that we could use to make the task easier/faster. Also, any experience shared about creating the user objects for jasper business intelligence portal would be appreciated.
It is interesting for my employer too.
I researched a lot about it, it seems there is no way to do achieve this in a (semi) automatic approach.
I'm currently working in my own Report Generator, to replace Crystal Reports in my company.
Let me know it it interest you.
We have a newly documented feature request, from sales and support, to integrate Crystal Reports into our LAMP product. (It's more like LAPP, really, with Postgres and PHP.)
I have to admit, although I've heard about it from time to time, I've never even seen Crystal Reports in the wild. But the buzz is that it will help sales tremendously if we can support it.
So the question is about what we can do to satisfy the request. Are there APIs and SDKs, protocols and conventions we can use to get tight with Crystal Reports?
I'm not sure about the protocols and conventions, but there are indeed APIs and SDKs available for Crystal Reports, both for web app and windows app usage. I've been using Crystal Reports with my apps for a decade now, and generally it integrates pretty well.
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/crystalreports-sdk
You can get a free 30 trial of Crystal Reports 2008 here. If you want to deploy things, you may need the Developer Advantage licensing.
I've heard of "Crystal Reports" for years, but I'm really confused why a small ActiveX type of component that just displays and prints out data from databases (does it?) should be considered a whole product within the VS suite of products.
Is it something better, like something for Windows Server that lets you generate report server-side as PDFs or similar which is why its considered so important?
Enlighten me.
Crystal Reports is a very robust (and in many developers' opinions, complicated and painful) tool to build complex reports. It's much more than simply printing what's in the database - taking relational data and transforming it into massive corporate reports with hundreds or thousands of conditions is very time-consuming and difficult. For example, what if the report needs to have product summary sections which can be formatted completely differently based on the qualities or attributes of the product? CR has a scripting model that permits pretty much any transformation imaginable.
To replace Crystal Reports with something you seem to be imagining, would require a data transformation engine; an end-user-friendly UI to write transformation rules and design reports; and a presentation engine to format the reports in a print-friendly way. That definitely sounds like a full-fledged product to me.
The worst thing about CR is that there isn't anything better at what it does.
If what you want to do is what it "likes" to do--dump data from the DB into a formatted page--it's dead simple. If you're willing to tolerate pain & frustration, you can make it do all sorts of fancy things.
It's definitely more than just "an ActiveX control".
It's a whole product because it is supplied as such by the developer, and is installed only optionally. It enables support for Crystal Report files.
And no, it's not a small ActiveX type of component. It comes with a full-fledged report designer and runtime component and is a complete report solution, much like SSRS (SQL Server Report Services, or something - is that what you meant with the thing for Windows Server?). Have look at their web page for more information.
The Crystal Reports that come with Visual Studio are a 'lite' version of the suite of products , see this page for comparison of features between the full and lite versions of 2008
You should try Stimulsoft Reports.Net its better than CR.NET.In this solution there are no ActiveX involved and no merge module and runtimes....
One of the cool things they added was support for binding to .NET and other data providers. This company has been bought by so many companies in the past it has really hurt the product IMO.
Crystal Report is a third part "Reprot Creation" tool.
This comes as build-in with Visual Studio IDE, and using this tool you can create reports in your application.
Its a reporting tool that has a stand alone application for generating reports or reports can be integrated into a .net application.