Hi Folks - without resorting to Jasper or Velocity is it possible to develop a multi page report in Servoy just using standard form methods (and setting the format to A4).
I have a form with multiple tabs and I’d like to make a page per tab in a single report.
How about writing a small loop that goes to each form by reading them out of the tabs and joining those print jobs together?
Jan Aleman:
How about writing a small loop that goes to each form by reading them out of the tabs and joining those print jobs together?
Thanks for that feedback Jan - that is one route we had considered but I was hoping to get something in the preview window for the entire report (as we do with all of our other reports).
It would have been really useful if we could have a page break in the body section - perhaps a marker you could put in the body on which it could break, then the other tab data inserted on the second / third page etc.
Is the report in Servoy internally coded (that is its not a Java package you brought in) and if so might it be possible to make it just a little more intelligent? For example the ability to add a sub-report as a page element with grow and shrink etc + this page break marker?
We find that the majority of reports we could do in Servoy directly just as we used to do in Access 97, and it would be great if the Servoy report facility matched that functionality.
Cheers
It would be a lot of work to modify that… And a lot of people are using Jasper nowadays so I doubt it’s worth the 3-8 days of investment. How about displaying a pdf as your preview?
Jan Aleman:
How about displaying a pdf as your preview?
Just some question out of personal interest: would it be possible to execute the actual printout of a pdf from Servoy? (crossplatform win/mac…)
mboegem:
Jan Aleman:
How about displaying a pdf as your preview?Just some question out of personal interest: would it be possible to execute the actual printout of a pdf from Servoy? (crossplatform win/mac…)
Yes. rundll on win and open on mac. Some examples in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10052
I thought rundll would start the windows application for this type of file, just like you double-clicked it. On most systems Acrobat Reader is started for a pdf file. This is not the same as the actual printout…
However direct printing with Acrobat Reader can be done: ```
AcroRd32.exe /n /h /t <file_name> <printer_name>
Jan Aleman:
It would be a lot of work to modify that… And a lot of people are using Jasper nowadays so I doubt it’s worth the 3-8 days of investment. How about displaying a pdf as your preview?
Yes that’s possible - but its a bit of a disconnect from the way the other reports work in our app, one aspect we are trying hard to manage is the user interface remaining the same for similar tasks. We offer the user the ability to print/preview or have a PDF for each individual report right now - I don’t want to simply offer the PDF alone for this report (and ones like it). I guess for the future we will probably move completely to HTML reporting with Velocity and remove all Servoy Reports so we have only one UI set-up for the user - but I wish we did’nt have to.
Jan Aleman:
… And a lot of people are using Jasper nowadays
Yes there are a few people using Jasper Reports but I suspect its through necessity in many instances rather than choice. If Servoy were to offer sub reports and breaks as I suggested I think most reporting requirements could be catered for within the environment.
We don’t find Jasper easy at all and its just another level of complexity, in both development and deployment, that shouldn’t really be necessary. Servoy being a RAD and comparable to those other tools (Access, FM etc) we’d expect you’d want to at least match their functionality in terms of developer experience - in all areas (it excels them in many already of course) - and reporting seems like one of the biggest, after all its one of the primary methods users interact with the systems we build.
3 - 8 days development to offer this in Servoy seems like a great investment to me ( though I’m glad you wont be asking me to pay for it directly…)!
Perhaps you are correct Jan - maybe we are the only ones looking for robust reporting within Servoy, but here’s an idea - why not raise a poll on it on the forum (where we can all vote) and perhaps it would make clear if 3 - 8 days Servoy development would offer you a return in developer satisfaction! Hey, perhaps you could use a polling system to test out demand for new feature you are thinking about for future developments!
Appreciate your feedback as always!
I have found that the investment in learning and using Jasper pays off about the 5th report in terms of my productivity. (Someone else can comment on the Velocity I imagine…). The iReport is a very useful report designer and testing vehicle as well. The Jasper plugin makes the job straight forward. There is also the potential to use the report offline (i.e. not via any Servoy app) and then there is the Jasper server to offer for end-users ad-hoc reports if required. Depends a lot on what capabilities the customer could grow into over time.
My clients have found that the ability to preview on screen and then being able to save the file to a multitude of outputs including the printer is a boon to them for post-processing such as spreadsheets, inclusions in documents etc.
I designed the UI from day one with a preview facility in mind and never print directly to a hard copy printer - so my clients were used to that anyway.
I can always help with the initial Jasper learning curve as I have done for others both in this forum and directly…
Make a plan of slowly introducing Jasper/Velocity or other third party reporting tool into your product offering over time is the good way to test run the concept and amortize the learning curve over several (paid for) maintenance releases.
Good luck with the decision making process