Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers

In Detail

Pentaho Reporting lets you create, generate, and distribute rich and sophisticated report content from different data sources. Knowing how to use it quickly and efficiently gives you the edge in producing reports from your database. If you have been looking for a book that has plenty of easy-to-understand instructions and also contains lots of examples and screenshots, this is where your search ends.

This book shows you how to replace or build your enterprise reporting solution from scratch with Pentaho's Reporting Suite. Through detailed examples, it dives deeply into all aspects of Pentaho's reporting functionalities, providing you with the knowledge you need to master report creation.

This book starts off with a number of examples to get you familiar with the tools and technology of the Pentaho Reporting Suite. Then, with additional examples, it goes into advanced subjects such as charting, sub-reporting, cross tabs, as well as API generation of reports. There are also details and examples on extending Pentaho's open source reporting engine. The reader will learn the ins and outs of Pentaho Report Designer, including a cheat sheet with all the available short-cut keys, to make report design efficient and painless.

Embedding reports into your Java application can be difficult. With Pentaho Reporting it's just a few lines of code. The book provides examples of how to embed reporting into your J2EE and client Java applications, as well as showing you how to build dynamic reports from scratch using Pentaho Reporting's simple Java Bean-based report generation API.

Setting up and integrating a reporting server in an enterprise environment can be arduous. In addition to learning how to build great embeddable reports, you'll also learn how to combine Pentaho Reporting with Pentaho's BI Server for a zero-code, easy-to-configure, enterprise reporting solution.

This example-rich practical guide walks you through every aspect of Pentaho Reporting, including report layout, data source support, enterprise deployment, along with advanced topics such as side-by-side sub-reporting, cross tabs, API report development, and more.

Approach

This hands-on tutorial, filled with exercises and examples, introduces the reader to a variety of concepts within Pentaho Reporting. With screenshots that show you how reports look at design time as well as how they should look when rendered as PDF, Excel, or HTML, this book also contains complete example source code that you can copy and paste into your environment to get up and running quickly.

Who this book is for

This book is primarily written for Java developers who want to assemble custom reporting solutions with Pentaho Reporting. Their main interest is in the technical details of creating reports and they want to see how to solve common report problems with a minimum of fuss; they do not need an overview of BI or the importance of reporting.

Secondary audiences of this book are IT professionals who need to install a reporting solution in their environment, and want to learn advanced concepts within Pentaho Reporting such as sub-reports, cross-tabs, data source configuration, and metadata-based reporting.