I’m looking for a templating tool that allows powerful manipulation of data and report building. JasperReports is powerful, but is it the best out there? I generally don’t need the ability for fancy colors or gradients, but I do need the ability to position data accurately and produce reliable, quick results. Ideally, generating a report shouldn’t need to be driven by a visual tool, either, and should be entirely API based.
Does anyone have real experience with any major reporting framework in a large scale application? Some of the reporting tools I’ve seen deal primarily with BusinessIntelligence, and thus less direct programmatic control.
So in summary, I need
- Strong documentation and support
- The ability to control document output and print to PDF, programmatically
- Multiple layout formats
- Speed and efficiency
- Ability to last at least 4+ years
and I don’t need
- Pretty colors
- Rich interfaces (HTML output/etc.)
In general, I’ll be producing batch documents, which is why speed and efficiency are very relevant concerns.
Suggestions? Thoughts?
JasperReports is the best Java based reporting solution available.
Read the JasperReports 3.6 Development Cookbook to understand its capabilities.