Any FREE & MATURE reporting solution???

[neltan]

Hi,

I would like to ask for some advice. I'm now preparing the business year plan of 2003-04.

Here is the things we use:
- NT4 + MSSQL7 + VB Application + Crystal Report 7

Since Microsoft license are too $, part of our system is now using FREE technology
- Red-Hat 8 + PostgreSQL + Apache + PHP

Our corporate prefer to use "Free" software. But we are difficult to find a FREE and GOOD reporting tools.
I've been tested on 2 reporting tools
a. Report Manager
b. PDFLIB

But they cannot meet all our requirement:
- FREE
- Support PDF
- Support PostgreSQL, MSSQL
- Support Chinese (traditional & simpliflied)
- user-friends visual designer or,
- dynamic generated from PHP or,
- from JSP (we also consider java solution)

Do you have any suggestion on reporting tools for business use?

Best Regards,
neltan

 

[neltan]

Here is my conclusion on 2 reporting tools. Any suggestion?

1. Report Manager

- client-server structure to provide report service (even between Linux & NT/W2K)
- support PgSQL, MySQL, DB2, Connect database directly (just like Crystal Report)
- Visual designer available but not user-friendly & not mature enough
- report can be export to PDF
- Default not support Chinese
- may be, not tested) same Chinese font has to be installed on designer and viewer's PC
- user use client program (metaview) to connect server
- preview and print report from client's PC
- or export PDF file

2. PDFLIB

- install in linux and called from PHP
- PHP connect db and PHP generate PDF through PDFLIB's PHP API
- No visual designer, code in PHP -> not flexible
- Support Chinese
a.must install acrobat + asian font pack,
b.use .otf file from acrobat's asian font pack
- user get pdf from webpage directly

 

[neltan]

Can JSP generate report like PDF, Excel ?

 

[Bastien]

try

http://www.fpdf.org

Bastien

There are many ways to skin this cat,
but it still tastes like chicken

 

[rycamor]

http://datavision.sourceforge.net/

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