telephone:InetSoft Reporting Software: Report Designer
Report templates are created using the visual Report Designer. Two slightly different versions of the Report Designer are included in different InetSoft products as listed below:
Table 4. Versions of the Report Designer
Edition |
Description |
Style Report/Pro |
Report Designer supports creating elements, changing their attributes and controlling all aspects of element presentation and layout. All attributes and related information is saved in a template file in XML format. The Designer also supports visually building queries against multiple types of data sources and specifying data grouping, summarization and element data binding. Dynamic behavior can be associated with elements using Script capabilities. |
Style Report EE/ Style Intelligence |
In addition to all the features in the PRO version the Designer has functions for creating interactive forms and JavaScript event handlers for element onClick events. |
The focus of this document is the Java API. Details on using Report Designer are covered in the Report Designer. For information on starting Report Designer, see Starting Report Designer.
| View a five-minute Flash demo to get an overview of what InetSoft's business intelligence software, Style Intelligence, can do and how easy it is to use. |
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Data Sources for Reporting
If no datasources are configured when the Designer is started for the first time, it will pop up a dialog to request the location of the data source and query registry files. When creating your own application, you can specify any path as the query and data source registry files. If they do not already exist, they will be created automatically.
For example, we can use the data sources and queries defined in the examples/docExamples/datasource directory:
c:\{InetSoftInstallation}\examples\docExamples\datasource\ query.xml and
c:\{InetSoftInstallation}\examples\docExamples\datasource\ datasource.xml
Report Layout Options
InetSoft reporting supports two types of layout models: flow-based layout and tabular layout. When a new report is selected, the Designer prompts for the type of report. You can select a flow based report or a tabular report.
Report Classes
A StyleSheet object represents a flow-based report, a TabularSheet object represents a tabular report, and a BeanSheet represents a report bean. The three classes share many common operations that apply to both types of report. The common API is captured in the ReportSheet class.
If a program needs to use API specific to StyleSheet or TabularSheet, it can cast the object to the correct type. However, the most commonly used methods on a template, namely data binding and report processing, are available in ReportSheet class. Therefore, it is rarely necessary to perform type casting.
InetSoft Viewpoint |
“A well-designed dashboard that provides interactive controls and features like list filtering allow a person to drill through geographically structured information in just a few clicks to find answers. With non-integrated solutions, you might have to use one application to visually identify a geographical point of interest, and another to then report the data associated with that region. Our integrated solution offers ease of use and leads to quicker decisions; benefits that any organization can appreciate.” - Mark Flaherty, Chief Marketing Officer |
| Previous: Programming Reports | Next: Report Template-Based Programming |
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