Reporting Engine Guidance (Pentaho, JasperReports, BIRT)

Question

Hi, I've spent 4-5 hours or so in various forumns and at their websites researching reporting tools that can aid me in my development. I'm new to using tools like this and could use a bit of specific guidance.

I'm working on an web app that will be hosted on one server, but accessed by multiple users through login. Each user will have their own account and can only access reports that only pertain to their data associated with their account. The site will have around 1,000 to 5,000 accounts (which could end up with 2,000 - 10,000 users running different reports).

My environment is: OS: FreeBSD Webserver: Apache Database: MySQL Programming Languages: PHP, javascript (jquery & my own stuff)

The Business Intelligence reporting tools I spent most of my time on was: Pentaho Suite BIRT Suite JasperSoft Suite

My WebApp has to be able to support Multiple Languages in the output of the report. I read that BIRT and Pentaho offer multi-lingual report output, but I can't remember about JasperSoft. Some reviews said they used Pentaho and included the JasperReports (which I'm assuming was the professional product for $249...the reviews didn't specify this, but that's whats on their site now).

So, here's my question. With your experience, which would you suggest in my situation? I want to come up with 40-50 different reports the user could view online, with graphs, in multiple languages, based off of their account specific data, then if they want set up a schedule to have those reports emailed each week, month, etc. in a pdf, xls, or whatever...to whom ever they specify...the webApp would do this automatically. It would be nice to allow my users to dynamically create their own reports and save them as well. I don't want the system to get bogged down with these reports, most of the data is simple...there will be some aggregate data needs, but it's not going to be too SQL intensive...two, to three table joins or less. I want as small as a learning curve as possible, since I'm new to these types of reports, so which suite has the best documentation/smallest learning curve with the most usefule tools?

Some reviews said BIRT has a large footprint 100MB, where Pentaho has a small one, but JasperSoft has the smallest. Does the footprint really matter much if I own the server this will be stored on and can add more storage if necessary, or is the memory the problem? Should I stick with the Pentaho suite using jasperReports as one review is doing and said they r having good success with it?

Forgive me if this has been answered and is anoying...most of the forum reviews I read were about 2-3 years old... I was hoping to get more up-to-date opinions.

Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Start prototyping with the one you felt best about first.

Answer 2

multi-lingual report output

I confirm that JasperServer and JasperReports support multi-lingual report output. The JasperServer UI is internationalized too. It's common to implement single sign on between your app and JasperServer and then expose some parts of JasperServer, so in that situation it's important to have an internationalized GUI... but I'm not sure whether you are interested in that.

allow my users to dynamically create their own reports

JasperServer does not have that in the Free (and free) version. It does have it in the paid professional versions.

That's not a complete answer, since I cannot compare the Jaspersoft solutions with the others. But hopefully it's helpful.

Answer 3

Hey, ronedog here. I don't know what happened, I can't log in anymore to stackflow, so i had to create another account.

Anyway, mdahlman, thanks for the help there. I liked JasperReports...it seems just a bit more "less complicated" and with multi-lingual support I'm leaning to that one. I don't mind the $250 price tag at this stage, if it will really give my users the ability to dynamically create their own reports, especially with a user interface in their own language.

Answer 4

I am a member of the BIRT Project team, so I am a bit biased, but my company has recently completed a comparison of the BIRT, Jasper, and Pentaho report development tools. If you are interested, you can see the results at the Innovent Solutions web site (free, no registration)