Table Of ContentPentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java
Developers
Create advanced reports, including cross tabs,
sub-reports, and charts that connect to practically
any data source using open source Pentaho Reporting
Will Gorman
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers
Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of
the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold
without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing,
nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged
to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: September 2009
Production Reference: 1310809
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847193-19-3
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar ([email protected])
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
Credits
Author Editorial Team Leader
Will Gorman Gagandeep Singh
Reviewers Project Team Leader
Jem Matzan Priya Mukherji
Kurtis Cruzada
Project Coordinators
Acquisition Editor Zainab Bagasrawala
James Lumsden
Lata Basantani
Development Editor
Proofreader
Dhiraj Chandiramani
Laura Booth
Technical Editor
Production Coordinator
Gaurav Datar
Adline Swetha Jesuthas
Indexer
Cover Work
Rekha Nair
Adline Swetha Jesuthas
Drawing Coordinator
Nilesh R. Mohite
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
Foreword
During the course of the last 8000 years, no other invention has driven the course of
human development more than the ancient art of business reporting. In the ancient
city states of Mesopotamia, the rulers of the fast growing states carved inventory lists
and tax records into stone plates. For the first time in human history this enabled the
management of large distributed empires, armies, and organizations.
Fast-forward a few thousand years, and the art reporting is still in fashion. Even
today reporting drives empires, not ones rules by kings, but empires created by
entrepreneurs as well as large-scale public traded companies. Carving lists and
numbers in stones has been replaced by electrons traveling at the speed of light to
deliver critical information to the leaders of today's business world.
When I first came to JFreeReport, I did not care about the big players. All I needed
was a printing system to create long and boring printouts at reasonable speed and
cost. None of the commercial vendors were able or willing to solve my needs, and
hence I stumbled (quite accidentally) over JFreeReport. After some time extending,
optimizing, and debugging in the reporting engine, I was addicted to it. Eight years
later, the project has changed radically from its early roots. As we grew from simple
printing to fully featured BI-reporting, we left the name "JFreeReport" behind and
became known as "Pentaho Reporting". But this original love has never diminished
and all these years later, the project has grown stronger to now challenge even the
age-old commercial offerings in their own space.
The book you're holding in your hand right now marks an important milestone in
Pentaho Reporting's history. For the very first time, we are now able to point our users,
developers, and partners to a professionally written document that covers all aspects
of the Pentaho reporting engine. After eight years of sending developers into the Java
code to learn how a feature is working, this is a remarkable and welcome change.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
If you want to understand the concepts used in Pentaho Reporting or want to add
reporting capabilities to your own application, you will find this book an invaluable
companion on your journey. As the book guides you from the very simple examples,
to the fully embedded reporting scenarios, the knowledge in the book will guide you
safely through all your tasks so that you can become productive very fast.
Business Reporting should be available for everyone who has a need for it, so take
control of your data.
Thomas Morgner
Chief Architect, Pentaho Reporting
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
About the Author
Will Gorman is an Engineering Team Lead at Pentaho. He works on a variety of
Pentaho's products, including Reporting, Analysis, Dashboards, Metadata, and the
BI Server. Will started his career at GE Research, and earned his Masters degree in
Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Over the
years, Will has given many speeches, including topics at local Java User Groups and
has also published technical papers in journals such as Neurology. Will is originally
from Cincinnati, Ohio and now lives in Orlando, Florida, the headquarters of Pentaho.
This book was possible thanks to all the great help from Pentaho's
Reporting team, including Thomas Morgner, the lead architect and
founder of Pentaho Reporting, Kurtis Cruzada, Pentaho Reporting's
Product Manager, Jem Matzan, documentation lead for Pentaho
Reporting, and many of the Pentaho engineers who work on Pentaho
Reporting and Pentaho Report Designer, including David Kincade,
Mike D'Amour, Ezequiel Cuellar, and Bill Seyler. I'd also like to
thank all those in the open source community who have contributed
to Pentaho Reporting.
I also want to thank the founders of Pentaho, Doug Moran, James
Dixon, Marc Bachelor, and Richard Daley, who make every day
at Pentaho entertaining and enlightening. Finally, I want to give
special thanks to my patient wife Laura and our wonderful son
Luke, who both gave me their full support during the many
weekends and holidays of book writing.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
About the Reviewers
Jem Matzan is the author of hundreds of information technology articles
and reviews. Apart from being an author, he is a ghostwriter, editor of several
technology-oriented books, and a software documentation specialist.
Kurtis Cruzada is a graduate of the University of Central Florida majoring in
Accounting and minoring in Computer Science, and also holds an MBA with a
focus in Accounting Information Systems. Kurtis began his career in the Business
Intelligence field in the early 1990s. In late 1990s, Kurtis joined Arbor Software/
Hyperion Solutions where he managed Wired for OLAP (Hyperion Analyzer and
Web Analytics) and Hyperion's BI Workspace, which later became the collective
front-end framework for all the web-based Hyperion products. In late 2005, Kurtis
joined Pentaho as a Senior Product Manager primarily focusing on Reporting and
the BI Platform.
I would like to thank my wife, Tracy and my kids, Riley, Mallory
and Kai for supporting me throughout my career and endeavors.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Pentaho Reporting 7
Typical uses of Pentaho Reporting 8
Operational reporting 8
Business intelligence reporting 9
Financial reporting 9
Production reporting 11
Pentaho Reporting history 12
Pentaho Reporting timeline 13
Feature overview 14
An advanced reporting algorithm 14
A multitude of available data sources 14
A wide variety of output formats 15
Pixel accurate rich formatting 17
Embedded charts 18
Report parameterization 18
Formulas and style expressions 19
Sub-reports 19
Cross Tab Reports 20
Interactive reporting 20
Rich authoring tools 22
Reporting server 23
Java API for building reports 23
Extensibility 23
A business friendly open source license 23
Pentaho reporting roadmap 24
Pentaho Reporting architecture 24
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
Table of Contents
LibBase 24
LibDocBundle 25
LibFonts 25
LibFormat 25
LibFormula 25
LibLoader 25
LibRepository 25
LibSerializer 26
LibXml 26
Report Engine Core 26
Report Engine Extensions 26
Summary 27
Chapter 2: Pentaho Reporting Client and Enterprise Examples 29
Pentaho Reporting and example prerequisites 29
Setting up Pentaho Reporting 30
Building your first report 32
Report Designer introduction 32
Creating and configuring your first data source 34
Report layout 35
Creating the report title 36
Creating column headings 36
Populating the details band 37
Creating a report summary 38
Previewing and saving your report 38
Embedding your report in a Swing application 40
Setting up the Swing example application 40
Incorporating Pentaho Reporting into the application 43
Embedding your report in an enterprise web application 47
Setting up the example Tomcat application 47
Incorporating Pentaho Reporting into the web application 49
Adding additional output formats 53
Summary 54
Chapter 3: Pentaho Reporting Examples in the Real World 55
Setting up the example data source 55
ElectroBarn inventory report 58
Configuring the data source 58
Creating a query 59
Creating the Report Header and Page Footer 60
Defining the Group Header 62
Defining the Details band 63
Defining the Group Footer and the Report Footer band 64
[ ii ]
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by David Martone on 16th September 2009
710 South Avenue West, , Westfield, , 07090
