Whats a good API for generating reports for a java web application?

Question

I have a J2EE application that has a lot of reports, the situation now is the following:

Report filters' values are sent to the application over DWR mainly, the data are retrieved from Oracle DB throw DB procedures and returned back to the client.

However, some customization is required every now and then (new data filters, columns, ordering, ...), and these changes are painful to implement since we need to modify the JSPs, DB Procedures, the application itself, ...

What API do you recommend to use for such reports?

Answer 1

If you have enough clout to recommend a major change, I would recommend going with an actual reporting service. Then DB guys can generate reports. They can whip reports up much more quickly than creating a whole new application for each report.

Answer 2

You can try jExcelApi to produce Excel reports.

The BIRT is more extensive Reporting engine from Eclipse foundation.

Answer 3

JasperReports is popular as I heard.
ILog JViews if you want to take the commercial route.

Answer 4

You could try Docmosis which is free and template based (though you need to pay for unlimited scalability options). To change layouts, fonts etc and such you can do it in the doc or odf template. Docmosis can spit out doc/pdf/odf/html etc from a Java server.