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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Jasper Reports

JasperReports is an open-source reporting tool for Java that can be used to create simple reports for integration within a Java application. To use JasperReports, you will need to download the JAR files or source code from SourceForge. The report framework itself is very basic and has only a fraction of the features you would find in a commercial product. But with that said, the basic features you would expect to create presentation-quality reports are there, if not as polished as its commercial counterparts.

To create reports, you will need to know XML pretty well, as there is a lot of hand-coding and editing required. Alternately, you can download one of the open source report designers that is available for JasperReports .

The samples that come with JasperReports are very simplistic, so don’t expect to create complex reports off of the bat. You may be able to work with the tool to create more complex reports for your own uses, but it is difficult to work with (even with one of the afore-mentioned designers).

For exporting, JasperReports supports PDF, HTML, XLS, CSV and XML file formats. And the integration options for integrating JasperReports into an application are simple but effective and most Java developers will be able to pick the skills up quickly to preview, print and export reports.

JasperReports
Vendor: Jasper Report, open source project
Price: Free

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