Jasperreport Vs iReport

Question

Hi,

I have a need of a reporting capbility in my web application. I have googled the net and found that JasperReport is the best java reporting framework out there.

I wanted to learn about JasperReport but when I went to their site, I found out also about iReport.

I checked at the download site and it says. If you're interested in JasperReports, particularly if this is your first download, we recommend that you may want to consider downloading iReport instead. The iReport download includes JasperReports.

Does this mean that I should learn iReport instead? Or which is which.

Answer 1

iReport is a graphical tool for creating jasper reports.

It will generate the xml jasper report file for you.

Or to quote iReport:

iReport is a visual report designer for JasperReports. The library is a report engine that can be integrated in your open or commercial application to generate the reports designed with iReport, display them on screen or export them in a final format like PDF, OpenOffice, DOCX and many others. Alternatively, you can stream the result through a web application or send the final document directly to a printer. JasperReports is in some way the core of iReport.

For more information have a look at this iReport introduction page.

After you create your file you will have to learn a small bit about Jasper report to integrate it into your program.

Answer 2

Report templates used in JasperReports are written in special XML-based language. XML means that these templates are regular text files and may be edited in any text editor. Sometimes it's much more simple to quickly open a template in text editor and make the fix rather than start iReports, open template in it, and do the work moving the mouse.

iReport is effective if one need modify a lot of report elements at once, say move 100 elements by 5 points to left. If only one element should be modified, I often use text editor.

iReport is platform-independent because it is written in Java. I'm successfully using it on Debian Linux and MS Windows XP.