Book Image

Pentaho 5.0 Reporting by Example: Beginner's Guide

By : Mariano, GARCIA MATTIO
Book Image

Pentaho 5.0 Reporting by Example: Beginner's Guide

By: Mariano, GARCIA MATTIO

Overview of this book

Open source reporting tools and techniques, such as PRD, have been comparable in quality to their commercial counterparts this is largely due to the market's marked tendency to choose open source solutions. PRD is a very powerful tool and in order to take full advantage of it you need to pay attention to the important details. Pentaho 5.0 Reporting by Example: Beginner's Guide clearly explains the the foundation and then puts those concepts into practice through step-by-step visual guides. Feeling confident with your newly discovered, desirable, skill you will have the power to create your very own professional reports including graphics, formulas, sub-reports and many other forms of data reporting.Pentaho 5.0 Reporting By Example: Beginner's Guide is a step-by-step guide to create high quality, professional reports. Starting with the basics we will explore each feature to ensure a thorough understanding to peel back the curtain and take full advantage of the power that Pentaho puts at our fingertips. This book gives you the necessary resources to create a great variety of reports. You will be able to make reports that contain sub-reports, include graphics, sparklines and so on. You will also be able to parameterize your reports so that the final user can decide what information to visualize. You will be able to create your own stoplight type indicators and drill down in your reports. and execute your reports from your own web application. Pentaho 5.0 Reporting By Example: Beginner's Guide lets you learn everything necessary to work seriously with one of the world's most popular open source reporting tools. This book will guide you chapter by chapter through examples, graphics, and theoretical explanations so that you feel comfortable interacting with Pentaho Report Designer and creating your own reports.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Pentaho 5.0 Reporting by Example
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

PRD layout


Now we will analyze the PRD layout bit by bit.

We can identify the following sections in the layout:

  1. Work area

  2. Insertable objects

  3. Report tree structure

  4. Style and Attributes

  5. Data panel

  6. Menu bar

  7. Shortcuts

  8. Tab section

  9. Format tools

  10. Message section and memory indicator

We will see the most important options in each section, and we will specify the area of the PRD layout where each of these sections are located.

The Work area

This is found at the center of the screen. This area is more commonly called Canvas, and this is where we will place the fields, charts, lines, and so on that we want to see in the report.

To the left of the Work area, we will find the following sections:

  • Page Header

  • Report Header

  • Details

  • Report Footer

  • Page Footer

By default, only these sections are visible in the Work area of the new reports. There are other predetermined sections that are initially invisible, such as Group Footer and Group Header. New sections can also be added as subgroups.

Insertable objects

These are found...