Reporting tools – a comparison – part 1

Business intelligence reporting tools have been around for a number of years.  They provide functionality ranging from developer-only libraries that help organize relational data to visual report designers for IT professionals to web-based ad hoc querying applications targeted at business users.  But only during the past two years have some of these packages matured and evolved to a point where an enterprise can reasonably select one as a significant piece of technology to be deployed throughout the organization.

 

Today we are going to compare some of the most popular reporting tools based on a set of criteria which will include:

 

• Ease of use:  the need for training should be minimal and the interface should be pleasurable to use
• Ease of deployment:  business users should need only a standard web browser to access the tool
• Security:  the application should work with established security mechanisms (e.g., LDAP)
• Distribution:  it should be easy for users to have reports emailed to themselves and to others
• Scheduling:  end users should be able to schedule future report runs (e.g., first Monday of each month)
• Multiple formats:  users like to have options when exporting report data (e.g., XLS, PDF, CSV)
• Availability:  users want the reporting system available 24x7 (i.e., clusterability, scalability)
• Ease of administration:  it should be straightforward to set up and maintain the solution
• Viability:  the tool should have a well-structured and thriving community with a reasonable license.

 

And the candidates are:

1. OpenReports
2. Next Reports
3. Pentaho
4. JasperReports

OpenReports

Not to be confused with OpenReport, OpenReports (oreports.com) provides enterprise wrappings around a number of reporting engines that include:  BIRT, JasperReports, JFreeReport/Pentaho, and jXLS.  It offers a web-based interface with support for scheduling, security integration, and administration.  

The primary benefit of OpenReports is that it allows users to mix and match reporting engines.  In this fashion, different groups within an enterprise are able to use different report design tools yet share the same server platform.

OpenReports is licensed under the GPL, version 2.  It is based on enterprise Java technology, supports OLAP functionality, and offers many report formats that include HTML, PDF, CSV, XLS, RTF, and image.  
It allows reports to be scheduled and sent to users via email.  It also has both SOAP- and REST-based API's.

 

The Professional version of OpenReports adds the following features:  user dashboards that can display multiple reports, charts, or graphs simultaneously; drilldown charts; and report usage statistics.  The list price for this version is approximately $500 per server.


NextReports

Another interesting approach to business intelligence comes from a fairly small vendor - and that is NextReports. NextReports is offering their customers three distinct tools: NextReports Designer, NextReports Engine and NextReports Server.

 

NextReports Designer is an application able to design in-grid reports using a connection to some of the most popular databases like Oracle, MySql, MSSQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird and Derby. It has an intuitive interface that makes report creation a quick and easy task.

Using NextReports Designer you can design or create your own SQL, create reports from stored procedures and export data to various formats. And these are just the top of the iceberg. By employing unique features, like in-spreadsheet design, Next Reports Designer aims to speed up reporting tasks.

 

NextReports Engine is a lightweight Java platform development library which can be used to run NextReports inside your application. This library is very easy to use: the reports can be integrated with just a few lines of code. And what’s even better is the fact that business developers, value added resellers and ISVs can embed the Reporting Engine into their applications free of charge.

NextReports Server allows scheduling NextReports and Jasper Reports and automatically delivering them via e-mail, FTP, SSH, etc, in all sorts of formats like HTML, EXCEL, PDF, RTF, CSV, TSV, TXT or XML. Featuring a fast and efficient web interface, NextReports Server makes use of advanced Web 2.0/Ajax technologies to provide speed and ease of use normally experienced in desktop applications. NextReports Server shows your charts, table reports and alarm reports in real time inside dashboards.

 

What is interesting in their approach is that they are offering the reporting software applications for free and the only one which requires a fee is NextReports Server. And it is quite cheap considering its usability.

 

To be continued

 

I have just realized that this articole is going to be longer than I have previously anticipated. So I will draw the line here. But stay in touch for the second part of our comparison. We will cover the reporting capabilities of the Jasper Reports system and the Pentaho business intelligence suite.