JasperReports
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "JasperReports".

JasperReports is an open source Java reporting tool that can write to screen, to a printer or into PDF, HTML, Microsoft Excel, RTF, ODT, Comma-separated values and XML files.

It can be used in Java-enabled applications, including J2EE or Web applications, to generate dynamic content. It reads its instructions from an XML or .jasper file.

Features

JasperReports is an open source reporting library that can be embedded into any Java application. Features include:

• PDF, HTML, Microsoft Excel, RTF, ODT, CSV and XML files. The engine allows report definitions to include charts, with the rendering provided by the JFreeChart library which supports many chart layouts, such as Pie, Bar, Stacked Bar, Line, Area, Scatter Plot, Bubble, and Time series.

• Multiple sources can be merged together.¹ The data can be retrieved from defined data sources such as JDBC, CALS Table Models, JavaBeans, EJBQL, XML, Hibernate, and Comma-separated values, and additional data sources can be added to the JasperReports framework by plugging in a custom JRQueryExecuter. An extension is available to use Oracle PL/SQL stored procedures as a data source.²

• Scriptlets may accompany the report definition¹, which the report definition can invoke at any point to perform additional processing. The scriptlet is built using Java, and has many hooks that can be invoked before or after stages of the report generation, such as Report, Page, Column or Group.

• Sub-reports³

For users with more sophisticated report management requirements, reports designed for JasperReports can be easily imported into the JasperServer - the interactive report server. JasperServer Project Page

JasperSoft

Teodor Danciu began work on JasperReports JasperReports Project Page in June 2001, the sf.net project was registered in September 2001⁵ and JasperReports 0.1.5 was released on November 3rd 2001 ⁶.

JasperReports Version 1.0 was released on July 21, 2005⁷.

The code was originally licenced under a copyleft JasperReports License⁵ and later moved to LGPL.

In April 2005, Paul Doscher, formerly of Business Objects, formed JasperSoft by acquiring the copyright of JasperReports from Teodor Danciu⁸, hired him, and as of July 2005 had raised $23.3m in capital⁹. As a result, JasperSoft is able to provide commercial software around the JasperReports product, and negotiate contracts with software developers that wish to embed the JasperReports engine into a closed source product.

JasperSoft's main related product is JasperServer JasperServer Project Page, a Java EE web application that provides advanced report server capabilities such as report scheduling and permissions. It is available under an open source license for use in conjunction with open source infrastructure such as MySQL and JBoss, or a commercial license for enterprise deployments involving commercial databases and application servers.

JasperSoft has leveraged their JasperServer product to enter the OnDemand BI space with a reporting platform for salesforce.com, Jasper4Salesforce. Jasper4Salesforce Product Page Jasper4Salesforce provides BI around data stored within salesforce.com. Jasper4Salesforce is marketed through salesforce.com's AppExchange application marketplace. Jasper4Salesforce AppExchange Marketplace Page

JasperSoft is a gold partner with MySQL¹⁰, and JasperReports was included in the PostgreSQL distribution Bizgres version 0.7.¹¹¹²¹³

JRXML

JasperReports are defined in an XML file format, called JRXML, which can be hand-coded, generated, or designed using a tool. The file format is defined by a Document Type Definition (DTD), providing limited interoperability.¹⁴

The main difference between using XML and a .jasper file is that the XML file should be compiled in runtime using the JasperCompileManager class.

Third party tools

There are many tools providing JasperReport JasperReports Project Page capabilities:

• iReport, iReport Project Pagean open source standalone graphical program that provides report designer capabilities, and is able to run reports using all data source supported by the JasperReports engine.³ iReport is actively maintained by JasperSoft.¹⁵
• SWTJasperViewer, an open source reusable component that can be embedded in any SWT/JFace application such as Eclipse.¹⁶
• five Eclipse plug-ins that provide report designing and debugging capabilities, including:
  • an open source iReport plugin for Eclipse
  • a commercial Eclipse plug-in called JasperAssistant.¹⁷ The JasperAssistant plug-in is built using SWTJasperViewer.¹⁸
• WebReportBuilder, an open source Java J2EE web application that allows web based developers and non developers to create basic and advanced Reports based on JasperReports to be used as a Web Report Server.
• OpenReports, a Java EE web application that provides advanced report server capabilities with support for four open source reporting engines: JasperReports, JFreeReport, JXLS, and Eclipse BIRT.¹⁹
• JasperTags [1], a JSP tag library for easy inclusion of reports in web applications.

IDE Integration

Many prominent Java IDEs provide instructions for users wishing to integrate JasperReports into a project. ²⁰

• IBM Websphere Studio Application Developer ²¹
• NetBeans ²²
  • JasperReports Visual Designer for NetBeans - [2]
• Eclipse

Further reading

• David Heffelfinger (July 2006). JasperReports for Java Developers. Packt Publishing Limited. ISBN 1904811906. 
• Brian D. Eubanks (November 15, 2005). "Chapter 6. Graphics and Data Visualisation", Wicked Cool Java: code bits, open-source libraries, and project ideas. No Starch Press, pp144–146. ISBN 1593270615. 

Code refactoring

JasperReports has been the focus of several academic papers on code refactoring

• Rajesh Vasa; Jean-Guy Schneider (2003). "Evolution of Cyclomatic Complexity in Object Oriented Software". 7th workshop on the quantitative approaches in object-oriented software engineering (QAOOSE'2003), http://www.it.swin.edu.au/personal/jschneider/Pub/qaoose03.pdf. 
• Deepak Advani, Youssef Hassoun, Steve Counsell (January 2005). "Heurac: A heuristic-based tool for extracting refactoring data from open-source software versions" (PDF). Retrieved on 2007-01-11.
• Emerson Murphy-Hill (2005). "Improving Refactoring with Alternate Program Views" (PDF). Retrieved on 2007-01-11.
• Vasa, R. (17-18 November 2005). "Detecting structural changes in object oriented software systems". Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering (ISESE 2005): 463. doi:10.1109/ISESE.2005.1541855. ISBN 0-7803-9507-7. 
• Deepak Advani, Youssef Hassoun, Steve Counsell (2006). "Extracting refactoring trends from open-source software and a possible solution to the 'related refactoring' conundrum". Proceedings of the 2006 ACM symposium on Applied computing: 463. doi:10.1145/1141277.1141685. ISBN 1-59593-108-2 (New York, USA: ACM Press). 
• S. Counsell, Y. Hassoun, G. Loizou and R. Najjar (2006). "Common Refactorings, a Dependency Graph and some Code Smells: An Empirical Study of Java OSS". Proceedings of the 2006 ACM/IEEE international symposium on International symposium on empirical software engineering: 463. doi:10.1145/1159733.1159777. ISBN 1-59593-218-6 (New York, USA: ACM Press). 

References

Further reading

• Jack M. Germain (2007-07-26). "So You Want to Be a Linux Developer, Part 1", TechNewsWorld. Retrieved on 30 July 2007. 

External links

• JasperForge.org JasperReports Project Landing Page
• JasperForge.org iReport Project Landing Page
• JasperReports JasperForge.org Project Page
• JasperForge.org (Home Page)
• DynamicJasper Open Source extension for dynamic columns reports
• JasperReports: Tips and Information
• JasperReports on Database Journal
• WebReportBuilder (JasperForge.org Project Page)
• Jasper4Salesforce (Product Page)