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

Summary


In this chapter, we saw that Pentaho Report Designer (PRD) is a very powerful tool for report editing and that it is licensed under the GNU LGPL. We also saw that it has a Java-based report engine and that the editor's UI is implemented with Swing widgets.

We saw that it can be embedded in Java projects in desktop and web applications, and that it can publish reports to the Pentaho BA Server.

We discussed the different types of reports, such as Transactional Reports and Tactical Reports, and their principal characteristics. We also discussed that what makes each of these reports different from others is their data source, their granularity, and their final goal.

We detailed the principal characteristics of PRD through which we were able to show its robustness, flexibility, and interactivity.

We listed each landmark in the development of PRD, following its evolution with each new contribution and functionality. We also showed in a small graph how PRD versions advanced over time.

By the end of this chapter, we are able to appreciate the quantity and variety of reports that PRD lets us create.

In the next chapter we will look at the system requirements to be able to execute PRD. We will download, install, and configure PRD 5.0. Furthermore, we will download and install a database sample.