Re: PDF Performance

The report design is done with iReport or the BIRT Report designer and you can add whatever parameters to the report that you need for each iteration. What RRE does is pass parameters to the report (if needed) and then run the report for you, outputting to the IFS or emailing the report. The API is generic so you just pass it the report file and the output location (or email parameters if that is what you need) and it runs and delivers the report. So, no, there isn't any additional Java programming needed for each report.

The idea is that if you had a "stock" report, like an invoice, that you just needed to pass a customer ID and date to, you could have a green screen or web front end that prompted for the parameters and then it ran the report. So, depending upon the report that you have designed, you pass the API the parameters for the report, the file location of the report template and the output options and RRE takes care of running and delivery. The assumption is that the report has already been designed and just needs to be run.

The iText stuff is a bit more involved because you are programmatically creating the report on the fly. You pass the API the report title and heading, you pass the column headings you want, and then iteratively write the data to the report columns. It is roughly analogous to using an internally defined report format except you are writing to PDF rather than spool file.

Pete


On 5/12/2010 10:17 AM, Aaron Bartell wrote:

I have been meaning to dive into your RPG Report Engine for awhile and I
just now skimmed your presentation. Does each new report require Java
coding to be done? I wasn't quite sure on that.

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
http://mowyourlawn.com/blog/


On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Pete Helgren<Pete@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

FWIW I presented a session at the recent Orlando Common Conference on
"Open Source Report Writing Tools for IBM i". You can find the
presentation here:

http://www.opensource4i.com/Open_Source_Report_Writing_Tools_for_IBM_i%20-_Orlando_2010.pdf

I also finished up some additional work on the RPG Report Engine which
now has an RPG wrapper for iText (rudimentary) and can run reports from
RPG created for Jasper or BIRT. The BIRT addition took the zip file
from about 10mb to 150mb (!) and I haven't had time to strip out jars
and plugins that aren't relevant to the BIRT report features that the
Report Engine supports but it is all open source and the complete (and
large) zip file can be found here:
http://www.opensource4i.com/downloads/2008042811495836/rrepackage.zip
Even with my new Comcast service it'll probably take a while to download.

RRE still suffers from not having a "server" piece in place that handles
the problem of JVM warm up. A report "server" is the next thing that
will be added but you might find the iText stuff useful for generating
PDF directly from RPG.

Pete