This section contains instructions for creating a simple report and and an overview of basic Report Designer features. See Report Design Wizard to create a report in the Report Designer quickly and easily.
Important: The Report Designer interface has changed. These changes are reflected in the content in this document.
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- Windows XP Professional, Mac OSX 10.4.6, Linux SUSE, RedHat Linux
- Requires the 1.5.0_06 Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
Installing Report Designer
The latest distribution for Report Designer is available on SourceForge at []at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=140317. Download the Report Designer as part of the Pentaho Open BI Suite (pentaho_demo_hsqldb-1.6.0.GA.863.zip), if you plan to publish your reports using the BI Platform provided by Pentaho. To download the Report Designer as a standalone application, go to http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=140317&package_id=192362. To follow the instructions and tutorials included in the Report Designer documentation, you must install the Hypersonic distribution of the Sample Data (pentaho_sample_data-1.6.0.GA.863.zip).
System Requirements
- Windows XP Professional, Mac OSX 10.4.6, Linux SUSE, RedHat Linux
- Requires the 1.5.0_06 Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
Installing Report Designer
After you download the contents follow the instructions below to install Report Designer (these instructions are for the standalone download):
- Extract contents of the zip file into a folder.
- Read the Readme for important updates.
- In the Report Designer folder, click the startdesigner.* file that is most appropriate for your operating system.
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Follow the instructions below to configure a sample datasourcedata source:
- In the Structure panel, right-click Data Source and select Add Data Source (formerly Add Pentaho Dataset). A window opens where you can configure the query used in the data source.
- Select SampleData and click the Query Designer. Make sure your Hypersonic database is running before doing so.
- Select PUBLIC from the Choose Schema list box. The SQLeonardo window is loaded. From this window, you can select the tables/views to be included in the data source.
- Select the PRODUCTS table by clicking PREVIEW. This allows you to visualize the data in the table quickly.
- Click OK to close both windows.
The data source is added to the report. The Properties tool window displays the available columns and the data type of each column. Click Configure to change the configuration of a data source. The data souce source is now set up and installed correctly. You must now define the look of the report.
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If you did not change the size of the label, a warning may appear in the Messages tool window telling you stating that the label is not big enough to show display the text. Use Resize the mouse and resize the label until there 's is enough space for the label to print the contents. Note that the warning message is immediately removed as soon as the label has a good size.
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Now the report definition is already valid although minimal and can be previewed. Just press the Preview button on the bottom of the report definition areaClick Preview.
After you start the reporting report engine has been started up, you are presented with a preview displays that looks the same as the like final report, but is limited to a certain amount number of data rows you can configure in the data source. The booting process is only done once, subsequent invocations of the preview are almost instantaneous. You can go back to the design view by pressing the Design button.
Now we are going to add textfields text fields that will finally contain data from our sample data source. Report elements which that are dynamically filled with data will have the suffix field.
Drag &and drop four Text Fields from the palette Palette to the item band . The report definition should look like the following screenshotas shown below:
The Messages tool window now shows displays several warnings about undefined fields. Each textfield text field should display a column from our sample data souce source hence we need to set each textfields text field's "Field Name" property in the Properties tool window to match a column from the data source.
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You can now preview the report and customize the report definition by using different fonts, background colors, lines and additional static labels as you like.
The following section will show you how to create next section contains instructions for creating the total sum of all sales by introducing functions.
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When you take a look at the preview of our current report, we would like a group to start for the first item of "Erik Brown." . The group should be finished after the last entry of "Erik Brown" and a new group should start for "Hans Meiser" etcand so on.
For this to happen we have to tell the group to apply to the fields FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME. (FIRST_NAME only won't be sufficient because there is a "Hans Meiser" and a "Hans Müller"). Therefore, we set Group Fields of the group as shown in the next screenshot:
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You can now see the the group header band above the item band and the group footer baand band below the item band. This is also the direction how they are printed.
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To effectively make the group take visually effect, we move the FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME Text Fields to the group header. To do this you can either delete the existing fields and create new ones in the group header or you can cut/paste them. You can achieve this by selecting both fields, either in the graphical view or in the Structure tool window, by holding pressing the CTRL button on your keyboard and selecting the fields with the mouse.
Now you can right click into the group header band and select paste:
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Adding the total sum for each group is almost identical as before:
- Select the Report Functions node in the Structure tool window.
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- Choose the ItemSumFunction and add it to the report.
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- Enter PRICE as the Field, CUSTOMER_GROUP as the group and CUSTOMER_PRICE_SUM as the function name
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- Add a Text Field to the group footer band, and set the Field Name to CUSTOMER_PRICE_SUM.
That's all! You now have a report that sums the total sales and calculates the total sum for each customer. You can now start to visually enhance the report definition as you like.
After some adjustments, additional labels and a few lines here and there there resulting report looks as follows: