JasperReports

JasperReports Server (JRS) is an open source, stand-alone and embeddable reporting server. It provides users with reporting and analytics tools in a real time or scheduled mode and the reports created in this tool can be exported to various formats such as PDF, HTML, XHTML, XLS, RTF, DOCX, Text, CSV, OpenOffice, XML and PNG.

JasperReports Server is built on the Spring Framework, uses a XML/RPC SOAP based web services architecture, and comes bundled with a Web Services API that enables report scheduling and execution, creation and adaptation of users, roles, organizations, permissions within the reporting environment, generating meta data against domains and also executing domain queries.

As an open source tool, the source code of the software  is readily accessible and Jaspersoft offers an ant based command line tool named  'Build-o-Matic' that automates the building and deploying of the source code to a number of supported platforms. This is a good thing for developers and BI experts and it infers that you can build the source for your preferred Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

JasperReports’ Server Features and Ease of Use

JasperReports Server has some great features some of which have been earlier outlined in this report. It’s open standards, REST and SOAP-based web service architecture simplifies mobile and web application integration and having the source makes it conceivable to extend  things with your own logic and deploy into the tool. Some of the common extension points include the Security Extension and Data Sources. Also earlier noted is the  Multi Tenancy features which infers that you can create organizations which can have users, roles and permissions so you are assured that users can see only permitted data in different units or departments within an organization. This means that report access and usage auditing is possible. Furthermore the JavaServer Reports Server Professional Version has a browser based dashboard designer giving end users the luxury of building dashboards from reports deployed in JRS using standard drag and drop mode. The dashboard can be customized to have input components which a user can supply at run time to filter the data that will be displayed on the dash board. You should know that filtering data in memory increases the response time of the reports and can help to reduce the load on the database. In addition, you can include information from external sources by referencing the URL of the website that stores the information you want to display.

The downside to this is that customization of its features requires working knowledge of Java.

And the learning curve can be high for first time users. Also some users have reported challenges with upgrading the report environment from one software version to the other.

Documentation and Support

As earlier stated, you would require working knowledge of Java to fully harness the potential of this tool. Fortunately, there are quite a number of excellent documentation, Wikis, Q&A forums, and user groups you can fall back to should the need arise. Users have also requested for more in depth documentation for some more advanced customization options.

Licensing

JasperReports Server Community Edition runs on the Affero General Public License (AGPL) while the Reporting , AWS ,Professional versions are all commercialized. You will need to contact the vendor or vendor’s portal for more information on pricing.

Conclusion

As you might expect, there are quite a number of advanced features for users who would like to use any of the versions with a commercial license. For example, JasperReports’ Professional and Enterprise edition allows users to configure the tool to log events in the system. This feature can be extended and the audit information is saved in the repository database and you can create reports from it using tools in JasperServer. You also have HTML5 visualizations with animation, interactive legends, and navigation through various combinations of aggregate and detailed data levels. Users and developers have access to Visualize.js, a JavaScript framework used to embed data visualizations and reports inside web applications. Built on Java, JasperReport runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms.