Re: Next assignment - Reports

Nathan,

You mentioned that Jasper Reports isn't an option but I am putting the finishing touches on an RPG wrapper for Jasper Reports called "RPG Report Engine". It is loosely based on the concepts that Scott Klement uses for the HSSF wrapper and Aaron Bartell uses for the RPG Chart Engine he wrote that wraps the jFreeChart API's. The 0.4 release I am working on doesn't currently have the "static" engine that RPG Chart Engine has where Aaron implements the engine running in a subsystem job and uses data queues to process the chart requests (eliminating JVM startup costs) but I plan to implement something similar as soon as I have the API's done. The current version would start and end a JVM with each submission.

The report outputs to PDF, HTML, XLS, RTF, TXT, CSV, ODT and has an option for emailing the completed report (using Javamail). I am working on the final test case now (passing report parameters) and hope to have it done tonight or tomorrow because I need to deliver it to a customer on Thursday (!)

In this case the report designs would be static (you could use iReport to create them) but the report would accept parameters so you could capture them in your form and pass them to the RPG wrapper.

The .5 release will add the "static engine" option.

The .6 release will add a rudimentary query to Jasper conversion tool.

The .7 release will add a scaled down WYSIWYG designer (swt)

The .8 release will add a rudimentary HTML designer

The .9 release is a placeholder for requested enhancements.

Just an FYI if other alternatives don't materialize for you.

Pete