JasperReports Server builds on JasperReports as a comprehensive family of Business Intelligence (BI) products, providing robust static and interactive reporting, report server, and data analysis capabilities. These capabilities are available as either stand-alone products, or as part of an integrated end-to-end BI suite utilizing common metadata and provide shared services, such as security, a repository, and scheduling. The server exposes comprehensive public interfaces enabling seamless integration with other applications and the capability to easily add custom functionality.
The heart of the Jaspersoft BI Suite is the server, which provides the ability to:
• Easily create new reports based on views designed in an intuitive, web-based, drag and drop Ad Hoc Editor.
• Efficiently and securely manage many reports.
• Interact with reports, including sorting, changing formatting, entering parameters, and drilling on data.
• Schedule reports for distribution through email and storage in the repository.
• Arrange reports and web content to create appealing, data-rich Jaspersoft Dashboards that quickly convey business trends.
For business intelligence users, Jaspersoft offers Jaspersoft OLAP, which runs on the server.
While the Ad Hoc Editor lets users create simple reports, more complex reports can be created outside of the server. You can either use iReport Designer or manually write JRXML code to create a report that can be run in the server. Jaspersoft recommends that you use iReport unless you have a thorough understanding of the JasperReports file structure. See Adding Reports Directly to the Repository and section Plug-in Requirements.
Jaspersoft provides several other sources of information to help extend your knowledge of JasperReports Server:
• Our Ultimate Guides document advanced features and configuration. They also include best practice recommendations and numerous examples. The guides are available as downloadable PDFs. Community project users can purchase individual guides or bundled documentation packs from the Jaspersoft online store. Commercial customers can download them freely from the support portal.
• Our free Business Intelligence Tutorials let you learn at your own pace, and cover topics for developers, system administrators, business users, and data integration users. The tutorials are available online from Professional Services section of our website.
• Our free samples, which are installed with JasperReports, iReport, and JasperReports Server, are documented online. For more information about the samples, see section Mastering Report Design.
This chapter contains the following sections: