Open Source Reporting Tool Comparison

A Comparison of Open Source Reporting Tools for the Enterprise Rod Cope, CTO OpenLogic www.openlogic.com

Agenda
Introduction
Background
BIRT, JFreeReport, OpenReport, DataVision
OpenReports
Pentaho
Jasper
Summary
Conclusion

Introduction
OpenLogic, Inc.
SLA support, security updates, and indemnification for over 400 Open Source packages
Dozens of Global 2000 customers
OSS Census (osscensus.org)
Global, community effort to catalog enterprise use of open source

Background
Comparison of leading Open Source reporting tools
Focus on enterprise caliber utilities
Free webinar, not a deep dive whitepaper
Attributes of interest:
license, functionality, compatibility, technology, ease of use, performance, export formats, web capabilities, report designing, report retrieval, security, schedulability, clusterability, installation, configuration, integration, and footprint

Other Reporting Tools
BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tools)
Part of Eclipse project, initially donated by Actuate
Focus is on report designer, debugger, and end-user tools
Enterprise deployment only available through proprietary iServer product from Actuate
JFreeReport
Now the foundation of Pentaho, to be covered later
OpenReport and DataVision
Low level tools for developers, not enterprise ready

OpenReports
oreports.org (not OpenReport at openreport.org)
Version tested: 3.0, December 2007
Wraps other report engines
Jasper, JFreeReport (Pentaho), BIRT, JXLS
Provides scheduling, security, admin
Interesting, but not updated since January 2008

OpenReports J2EE, Hibernate, Quartz, Spring Technology Jasper, Pentaho, BIRT Report Compatibility
OpenReport Professional (proprietary)
Dashboard, drilldown charts, stats
$500/server
Commercial Options OpenReports SOAP API Integration N/A Installation / Configuration / Footprint Yes, through standard app server clustering Clusterability High Schedulability N/A Security Web, email Report retrieval Relies on other reporting tools Report designing Admin, report retrieval, parameter support Web capabilities PDF, HTML, CSV, XLS, RTF, Image Export formats N/A Performance N/A Ease of use OLAP (Mondrian) Functionality GPL 2 License

Pentaho
Sponsored by Pentaho
Name: 5 founders want to retire in Lake Tahoe
Version tested: 1.7, May 2008
Good feature set, well-supported, UI's need work
Business Intelligence suite includes
Reporting (Report designer and viewer)
Analysis (OLAP)
Dashboards (Portal, metrics, alerts)
Data Mining (Relationship and trend discovery)

Pentaho J2EE, CAS, ACEGI, JBoss Portal Technology Pentaho (should work with Jasper and BIRT, but not officially supported) Report Compatibility
Pentaho Professional
SSO, LDAP, MSAD
Clustering, report versioning, audit trail
Commercial Options Web service API Integration Easy / Difficult / 325MB Installation / Configuration / Footprint Yes, through standard app server clustering Clusterability Yes, but admin can only edit existing schedules, not create new ones Schedulability User/group/role, restrict access to reports Security Web, email, web service, task bar notification Report retrieval Visual report designer, stand-alone client Report designing Admin, report retrieval, parameter support, drill-through, hypertext links Web capabilities PDF, HTML, XLS, RTF, text Export formats Good Performance Medium, occasionally disjointed and non-intuitive Ease of use Audit trail, performance monitoring, web-based ad hoc reporting wizard, conditional report distribution, OLAP (Mondrian) Functionality Several components: GPL 2, LGPL, MPL (Mozilla Public License) License

Pentaho: Report Designer

Pentaho Server: Solutions Page

Pentaho Server: Report View

Jasper
Sponsored by JasperSoft
Version tested: 3.0.0, June 2008
Mature, fairly robust, well-supported
Business Intelligence suite includes
JasperReports (Report designer and viewer)
JasperServer (Admin, scheduler, ad hoc queries)
JasperAnalysis (OLAP)
JasperETL (Data integration)
Most modern reporting web application
Still a bit rough around the edges

Jasper J2EE, iReport, Liferay Technology JasperReports Report Compatibility
JasperReport Professional
End-user ad hoc querying and reporting
Easy end-user dashboards and mashups
Commercial Options SOAP API, any J2EE server, any JDBC driver Integration Easy / easy / 500MB Installation / Configuration / Footprint Yes, through standard app server clustering (note that you may have to use pinned sessions): http://www.jasperforge.org/index.php?option=com_joomlaboard&func=view&id=39248&catid=10 Clusterability High and easy to configure through UI Schedulability SSO, external auth via LDAP/MSAD/custom, user/group/role, row and cell security for OLAP (part of Mondrian), User/group/role, restrict access to reports Security Web site, email delivery of scheduled reports Report retrieval Visual iReport designer, stand-alone or NetBeans plug-in Report designing Admin, report retrieval, parameter support, drill-through, hypertext links Web capabilities PDF, HTML, XLS, CSV, RTF, TXT, XML, Flash Export formats Good if attention is paid to optimization (e.g., http://www.javalobby.org/articles/hibernatequery103/ ) Performance High – best user interface of the group Ease of use Drilldown charts, I18N, L10N, OLAP (Mondrian), audit trail, email distribution, report versioning, Hibernate queries, custom expressions in Java or Groovy, crosstabs Functionality GPL 2 License

Jasper: Report Designer

JasperServer: Home

JasperServer: Report View

Pentaho and Jasper
The Mondrian project (OLAP tool) is used by both Pentaho and Jasper
Both support integration with Mondrian
OLAP schema design tool
JPivot for interacting with Mondrian through a web UI

Pentaho and Jasper: OLAP Schema Tool

Pentaho and Jasper: OLAP Web View

Pentaho and Jasper: OLAP View with Chart

Summary
Jasper
Heavy focus on reporting and analysis
Better server UI (web 2.0), easier to use
Better marketing, sites, and documentation
Easier to research and find what you need
Paid version: ad hoc query web UI, dashboard creation web UI
Pentaho
Better data integration, ETL, and workflow automation
Very powerful, but harder to use
Weaker documentation
Bonus: data mining and iPhone integration
Paid version: LDAP integration, SSO, auditing

Conclusion
If your focus is core reporting and analysis, ease of use
Jasper
If your focus is enterprise integration, data transformation, workflow
Pentaho
Competition driving Jasper and Pentaho hard
Look for rapid improvements in functionality, ease of use
They've leapfrogged each other in the past, it may happen again

Contact Information
For more information, please visit:
www.openlogic.com
Call us at 888-OpenLogic
Send an email to:
[email_address]

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Open Source Reporting Tool Comparison

by OpenLogic on Aug 13, 2008

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Open Source Reporting Tool Comparison Presentation Transcript