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Pentaho 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