Report designer plugins

Mark HHP

Are there any plugins out there for the report designer? Or alternatives to the report designer?

kklosson

I don't want to answer for Support but I'm sure the answer is no. There are a lot of discussions on the report designer here. Forgive me if I get any of these details wrong. The report designer is an open source designer/report engine from Jasper. Awaresoft has tweaked out a few bugs for me but as I understand it, any major overhaul means to replace it and infuse the AwareIM concepts - clearly a major task. There are also licensing issues (so charge me - I'll pay). I don't expect this to happen soon, maybe never.

That said, I have found that the report designer can do a lot, though the list of shortcomings is fairly long. In some cases, I have had to simply forgo some things that I would like to do. However, the ability to output information via the report designer is absolutely critical to my design and I have been able to achieve what I need - which is one particularly complicated report with about 25 embedded reports. So my advise is to determine whether there is a showstopper function that the report designer must do but can't, and deal with that.

Don't forget that you can do some interesting things with MS Word output as well but it's clearly a different track.

I would like to hear from Support what they see as the most viable option for improving the report designer and what it might take to get it done. It's clearly the weak link in an otherwise very impressive tool.

Powerm

Correct, it has to do with Jasper reports...very old fashion

Mark HHP

Cool, thanks guys.

I'll just have to make it work.

aware_support

Well, Aware IM creates SQL database, so, in principle, you can use any external report generator (such as Crystal Reports) that you can apply to the database tables bypassing Aware IM altogether

Powerm

Please update the integrated report tool when you can 🙂

Kahuna

aware_support wrote
Well, Aware IM creates SQL database, so, in principle, you can use any external report generator (such as Crystal Reports) that you can apply to the database tables bypassing Aware IM altogether

We have experience with IReport from Jasper.

Is it possible to create a report with IReport and call it from Aware IM? If that is the case then we can create pretty much anything we want, as we do with Servoy currently.

aware_support

You can, if you use this tool externally outside of Aware IM - just using its tables (if this tool allows it).

You won't be able to call this report from within Aware IM, though.

On another subject - kklosson and powerm, would you be able to specify here or send us the list of the improvements you would like to see in the Report Designer

kklosson

I'll do my best and I reserve the right to come back and add more later...

I would like to be able to access the page number as a condition. See forum post:
Using PAGE_NUMBER in a report condition>
It seems that once I select Attach Condition to an object (which I sometimes do by mistake) I can't clear it, even if I cancel the dialog. This could be improved.
When you put a text attribute in a box, and both items are set to stretch to contents, the text will overwrite the bottom of the box and it looks sloppy, like untied shoes. Is it possible to put a few pixels of buffer in there?
https://www.awareim.com/forum/d/4794>
I have an open ticket with you regarding sub reports. I know you have asked for a sample BSV and I got bogged down. But I'm convinced that the report engine is losing track of how much page space remains available when reports are embedded. I will try to work up a BSV to demo that. This is my #1 issue.
When the report designer is open and the right-corner X is selected to close it, it closes the entire Configuration tool with no confirmation. Clearly this is the wrong way to close the report designer but we need you to save us from ourselves on this one.
Open a report, diddle with it, and save. Then open another one and do the same. At some point, you will get Document Template Error. It seems that to be safe, any previously edited report has to be closed in order to work on another one without getting this error.
On the Select color dialog, there is a Recent pallet. Seems to be worthless between objects. It would be super neat if we could save a few favorites or if the recent selections were persistent from report to report and session to session.
A Copy Format tool would be invaluable.
It would be nice to be able to Start New Page based on the condition of an attribute. I'm probably the only guy who could use this.
A text object will do a funny thing when you edit it. New characters appear very small until the change is accepted - minor cosmetic.
When editing a text object, the change is not accepted until the item is deselected. This includes if the report is saved and closed. Many times I've had to come back and do it right. Perhaps some ACCEPT method can run when the report is saved.

I'll be back when I stumble into more things. Keep up the good work.

Powerm

a right panel where you can choose the attributes to show on the report
a "Save" button, instead of "Save & Close"...this option not always work
have a look at Pentaho, it is much better better than Jasper

Powerm

Pentaho link : http://www.pentaho.com

pbrad

And the big time saver... the ability to preview the report without having to go into test mode in the same way that Crystal Reports does would be a major time saver.

Cheers,
Pete

aware_support

Thanks, everyone. If there is anything else, keep them coming...

RLJB

A few more potential improvements for the report designer:

an options to "space evenly" (vertically and horizontally) - so you can select say 4 text boxes and click an icon to make them spaced out evenly
a way to manually insert a page break (with the need to use a Band)
the ability to overlap items within the designer and still have them print >> this is a major one
ability to add formatted text within a text cell - eg to be able to BOLD a word or use italics on a word etc

nlarson

Some items I would like to see

o Allow inclusion of image attributes
o Locale date strings should convert to user’s setting
o Read Protect should not be ignored by documents
o Consistently save minor alterations, like label changes
o Allow more than one file open at a time, or prevent open of one whihc would overwrite another (system can not find... .rdd error)
o editing common properties of multiple selected items at once
o do not add margin or padding automatically for sub-reports

I concur with many of the above too.

kklosson

Including image attributes is fully supported unless I missed your meaning.

nlarson

kklosson wrote
Including image attributes is fully supported unless I missed your meaning.

oops, pasted in an old list. Thanks.

rocketman

Although not a show stopper, I have always had a problem with line spacing - especially when embedding sub reports. The report designer seems to chew up space even with all the sections closed up to 1 pixel.

I have one report - which is a statement printout for some 150 members which used 19 pages in our old Microsoft Access system - but 39 in AwareIM. Mainly because the sub report consumes some white space even when there are no sub items to report on for that member

could PM you copies of both if you want to see what I mean

kklosson

Ability to deliver rich text. It's a major drawback that I can provide a rich text attribute in my BO, but I cannot place it in a report because the report designer doesn't support it.

RLJB

Can I mention page breaks again? (I know I'm boring)

Just finished a very simple 10 page report.

All data is in 1 BO and 1 instance of the BO (so it's actually really simple)

BUT we had to use 6 sub reports to get it to paginate correctly.

How it works:

1st report (the "holder" of the subreports) must be set to A4 to paginate
the "holder" has 6 odd bands, each holding a subreport and starting a new page
then all the subreports have to be A4 (this is the annoying part)

It would be so much easier if:

only the holder has to be A4
the subreports can be any (custom) size in terms of height
you had the ability in the subreport to manually insert a page break OR even better it just sorted it out itself

Basically you should be able to set a Band height > the page size and report designer paginates it to the page size automatically.