[POOL] Valentina Reports. Ideas? Wishes?

[Beatrix Willius]

Hi Ruslan,


Reporting is a very broad topic.

The reports I have done so far fall roughly in three categories:

- Print reports, where database fields of one record perhaps with  
information from sub-records are printed. This usually results in  
several pages either printed directly to the printer or to a pdf file.
- List reports, where information from one record perhaps with  
condensed data from sub-records goes into an Excel file, where the  
data is manipulated further.
- Graph reports, where the data is manipulated heavily first and then  
put into a nice picture.

For my day job at the Opel branch of GM I have extensive experience  
with the reports of kind 2 and 3. My application Mail Archiver uses  
print reports.

Print reports:
- otr Reports: Very easy to set up. Reports are created with drag and  
drop in an application. A file with the report information is  
generated, this file is called from Realbasic.
- iText: as otr Reports hadn’t been updated for almost two years, I  
recently switched over to use iText, which is a pdf library in Java.  
The reports need to be generated in code. It took a bit longer to set  
up then otr Reports, but my report needs are simple and it was my  
first Java code.

List and graph reports:
- Access: used to store the data. The data is manipulated either with  
DAO or sql, which then goes to Excel. Easy to use, even if no OO is  
available. On the other side, there were many moons where I spent  
about 40 hours with this kind of thing so I can do it half asleep.
- Cognos: in the past half a year I have been unfortunate to use a  
reporting system by Cognos - now IBM - for a sprawling and  
complicated database. It’s an expensive enterprises system suited for  
sales data - which I don’t have - and simple reports. Reports are  
created visually with drag and drop, but every report is a fight  
against the constraints of the system and the very chaotic data setup.

So where do I see a Valentina report generator? Have a look at otr  
Reports first. There is a new version out, but I think without  
Valentina support. While an iText report takes longer to generate the  
fact that I program a report means that I have full control over it  
and so far the result really looks good.

If you want to do more than print reports things will get complicated  
very fast. The book about Jasper reports still is on my reading pile.  
If I wanted to do graph reports most likely I would have also have a  
look at the new plugin from Monkeybread. But this isn’t something  
where I need Valentina support.






Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Regards

Trixi Willius

http://www.mothsoftware.com
Mail Archiver X: archive, clean and search email
http://www.beatrixwillius.de
Fractals, 3d landscapes etc.