Java – the best approach to use JasperReports

jasper-reportsjasperserverjavareporting

Here we are talking about three main products:
JasperReports: which is just a library to generate reports and fill it
iReport: which is GUI tool to develop templates used by the above library
JasperServer: which is full application with web interface for managing reports with users permissions and other features,

documentation is really not that good, i want to use the best of the above products to integrate JasperReports with my application (Spring/Hibernate), so please advice what is the best approach to do this,

1- design reports using iReport using embedded sql generation, and make it as a separate project from mine, I tried to use Hibernate or Spring within iReport but also I faced a lot of problems and no clear documentation for this part

2- attach it with my project, to use same Hibernate configuration, already created entities

3- try to use JasperServer which seems to be complicated, and then expose reports as webservices

or any other better, guaranteed approach, i know it's dependant on the way my project is dealing, but i've shortage in time, so it depends on the approach having better documentations or tutorials.

Best Answer

You can write your own Jasper framework in a module or subproject. You can maintain report definitions separately from queries and feed them with data produced by your code.

This way all data and handling stays in your project where it's easier to track or edit (e.g. when you only need to change an aspect of the query, add a filter or rewrite it for better performance). Also, this way you can use report data for something else (e.g. add CSV or XML output).

Related Solutions

Java – reflection and why is it useful

The name reflection is used to describe code which is able to inspect other code in the same system (or itself).

For example, say you have an object of an unknown type in Java, and you would like to call a 'doSomething' method on it if one exists. Java's static typing system isn't really designed to support this unless the object conforms to a known interface, but using reflection, your code can look at the object and find out if it has a method called 'doSomething' and then call it if you want to.

So, to give you a code example of this in Java (imagine the object in question is foo) :

Method method = foo.getClass().getMethod("doSomething", null);
method.invoke(foo, null);

One very common use case in Java is the usage with annotations. JUnit 4, for example, will use reflection to look through your classes for methods tagged with the @Test annotation, and will then call them when running the unit test.

There are some good reflection examples to get you started at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/reflect/index.html

And finally, yes, the concepts are pretty much similar in other statically typed languages which support reflection (like C#). In dynamically typed languages, the use case described above is less necessary (since the compiler will allow any method to be called on any object, failing at runtime if it does not exist), but the second case of looking for methods which are marked or work in a certain way is still common.

Update from a comment:

The ability to inspect the code in the system and see object types is not reflection, but rather Type Introspection. Reflection is then the ability to make modifications at runtime by making use of introspection. The distinction is necessary here as some languages support introspection, but do not support reflection. One such example is C++

Java – What are the differences between a HashMap and a Hashtable in Java

There are several differences between HashMap and Hashtable in Java:

Hashtable is synchronized, whereas HashMap is not. This makes HashMap better for non-threaded applications, as unsynchronized Objects typically perform better than synchronized ones.
Hashtable does not allow null keys or values. HashMap allows one null key and any number of null values.
One of HashMap's subclasses is LinkedHashMap, so in the event that you'd want predictable iteration order (which is insertion order by default), you could easily swap out the HashMap for a LinkedHashMap. This wouldn't be as easy if you were using Hashtable.

Since synchronization is not an issue for you, I'd recommend HashMap. If synchronization becomes an issue, you may also look at ConcurrentHashMap.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Java – reflection and why is it useful

Java – What are the differences between a HashMap and a Hashtable in Java

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