Book Image

Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers

Book Image

Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers

Overview of this book

Pentaho Reporting lets you create, generate, and distribute rich and sophisticated report content from different data sources. Knowing how to use it quickly and efficiently gives you the edge in producing reports from your database. If you have been looking for a book that has plenty of easy-to-understand instructions and also contains lots of examples and screenshots, this is where your search ends. This book shows you how to replace or build your enterprise reporting solution from scratch with Pentaho's Reporting Suite. Through detailed examples, it dives deeply into all aspects of Pentaho's reporting functionalities, providing you with the knowledge you need to master report creation. This book starts off with a number of examples to get you familiar with the tools and technology of the Pentaho Reporting Suite. Then, with additional examples, it goes into advanced subjects such as charting, sub-reporting, cross tabs, as well as API generation of reports. There are also details and examples on extending Pentaho's open source reporting engine. The reader will learn the ins and outs of Pentaho Report Designer, including a cheat sheet with all the available short-cut keys, to make report design efficient and painless. Embedding reports into your Java application can be difficult. With Pentaho Reporting it's just a few lines of code. The book provides examples of how to embed reporting into your J2EE and client Java applications, as well as showing you how to build dynamic reports from scratch using Pentaho Reporting's simple Java Bean-based report generation API. Setting up and integrating a reporting server in an enterprise environment can be arduous. In addition to learning how to build great embeddable reports, you'll also learn how to combine Pentaho Reporting with Pentaho's BI Server for a zero-code, easy-to-configure, enterprise reporting solution.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Summary


In this chapter, we've highlighted some typical uses of Pentaho Reporting, providing you with baseline ideas for implementing your own solutions. Typical uses for embedded reporting include operational, business intelligence, financial, and production reporting.

We've covered the unique history of Pentaho Reporting, from its JFreeReport roots to its current status as Pentaho Reporting. We've learned about the individuals who have built Pentaho Reporting from a spare time open source project into an enterprise level reporting engine, competing with proprietary reporting engines.

We've also learned a great deal about the rich features of Pentaho Reporting. Core features include a wide variety of data source integration, along with PDF, HTML, and Excel rendering. On the other hand, more advanced features include sub-reports and cross tab reports. Additionally, developer-oriented features such as open Java APIs, along with the available source code and a business-friendly LGPL open source license gives Pentaho Reporting a leg up on all other Java Reporting toolkits.

The architecture of Pentaho Reporting is also covered in this chapter, providing developers with a twenty thousand foot view of where they might be able to modify or contribute to the Pentaho Reporting Engine, along with giving them the ultimate flexibility of access to source code.

You'll soon be able to apply the rich feature set of Pentaho Reporting to your use case. In the following chapters, we'll introduce you to Pentaho Reporting's easy to use Report Designer and Java API, making it fun and easy to embed reporting into your Java application.