RE: Any report writer suggestions?

Troy,

As you said, there are many methods and tools/apps, open source and licensed, and I work for a vendor so you may discount this advice, but in my experience, the main report writing hurdle for business users is learning which of the dozens (hundreds?) of tables in your application database have the data they want.

If you haven't already done so, consider spending some time now studying your DB2 on i database, note the tables that are most often joined in your existing report programs, and collect some queries from your most skillful clients. You will probably discover that the vast majority of the reports clients want query a handful of your application's tables. Create some SQL Views that join those frequently queried tables correctly so your clients don't need to figure that out. Your SQL Views can also format dates and other values that might confuse your clients, provide meaningful column names, etc. Once you've done this, any tool you choose will be easier for users to learn and your staff to support.

Good luck.

Bill Langston
New Generation Software, Inc.
www.ngsi.com

-----Original Message-----

From: MIDRANGE-L<midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Troy Hyde
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2024 4:04 PM
To:midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Any report writer suggestions?

For more than 40 years we've been using (mostly) RPG to create reports for our clients who have their data on the System 36, AS400, iSeries, and now IBM i midrange servers.

As the data becomes more accessible (via ODBC & etc), many of our clients are using various tools such as Microsoft's Power BI to create some of their own reports, charts, Internet dashboards & etc.

We are now hoping to find a tool (open source or otherwise) that will allow non-programmers to create reports that can be run against the IBM i data. It would need to be able to not only access the straight data but also utilize SQL procedures and functions we provide for complex calculations. We would want to be able to write reports that our clients can run but also allow them to write their own reports. A Wysiwyg editor would be the ideal.

I'm just beginning to look at this but two products that pique my interest are JasperReports and Crystal Reports. I'm sure there are myriad others.

Any recommendations based on experience from the group? Would either of the two meet the needs I've described? Are there better products available?

Vendors comments welcome.

Thanks, Troy
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