The article this week addresses a common task that community users are asking about over and over - how do you specify parameters to a report, and pass a list of valid values for the user to select the parameter from? While there are several ways to do this, we are going to step through one example using the Pentaho Design Studio. The Design Studio eliminates the frustration of writing XML, and should make the parameter passing a bit easier to understand and implement.
For the sake of brevity, I will modify one of the existing samples from the Pentaho pre-configured installation's (PCI) sample solution. Using the JFreeReport HTML sample from the PCI, I will build a page that will prompt the user for which region they would like to report on, give the user a combobox filled with regions to select from, then display the report with the data filtered by the selected region. In this exercise, we demonstrate
- how to set up an input parameter ,
- how to use a default in-memory result-set to provide the list of values that are valid for the input parameter,
- how to map parameter options to "nice " counterparts for display,
- how to modify an existing report to accept the input parameter as part of the report query,
- and how to use a secured filter component to prompt the user for parameter value selection.
Resources Before You Get Started
Once again, be sure you have the following resources. I've listed the version numbers I used; perhaps our community members could post any successes or problems should you try this with other versions or configurations.
- Pentaho Pre-Configured Install, version 1.1.5 build 260
- Pentaho Getting Started Guide, version 1.1.5 build 260
- Pentaho Design Studio or the Action Sequence Eclipse Plugin , version 1.1.5 build 151
- Pentaho Design Studio User's Guide, version 1.1.5 build 151
Step-By-Step: How to Build Your Solution
- The first step in this exercise is to get the Design Studio installed and running on your computer. Refer to the Design Studio User's Guide to accomplish this step.
- You should have the Pentaho sample solution available on your computer. The sample solution comes bundled in the Pentaho Pre-Configured Install. If you haven't yet, unzip the PCI to a location on your computer that you will remember.
- The common way to work on Pentaho solutions is to set up your solution files as an Eclipse Simple Project. Since we are using the samples as our solution for this exercise, I will create an Eclipse Simple Project called "pentaho-samples", and point to the <pentaho-demo>/pentaho-solutions directory as my project directory.