JasperReports has the same execution stages, including compiling your reports and rendering in a specific format, for example, HTML. The first stage is the report design. If you are not using the Jaspersoft Studio visual tool, we assume that you have your JRXML file. The next step is to compile JRXML into a Jasper file. This compilation phase doesn't need to happen every time; it's needed only if you change the JRXML. Otherwise, you can use the same Jasper file. There are some strategies to cache the Jasper file, so basically you can do it on the build time or you can cache on demand in the application. For our application, we will be using the second approach--caching on demand in the application.
The next phase is to render or export. You can export the report to the many formats Jasper supports, such as HTML, EXCEL, or PDF, for instance. It's possible to use the same report layout and export to as many formats as you like. For our application, we will be using the...