Report generation

Report generation feature is an integral part of a great number of apps designed for different spheres – manufacturing, E-Commerce, finance, etc.

Why is it important to provide this functionality?

• Reports are crucial for business owners to make competent management decision based on them;
• A possibility to get meaningful and beautiful reports in an appropriate form adds significantly to a product competitiveness.

As a process, report generation has two major milestones:

1. Acquiring data;
2. Generating a file.

Let’s take a closer look at these milestones.

How is relevant data acquired?

There is a database, and there is a need to retrieve certain pieces of the info contained there. To make this happen, a programmer should prepare requests to the database. The potential drawback is that the information requested can be too complex, or slow to retrieve. The experienced developers know how to handle these issues effectively, and so does our team.

The next step is to produce a file. To accomplish this task, report generation software tools can be utilized; many of them are open-source ones. In case a complex report is desired, an open-source report generation framework or library might fail to produce some complex elements.

To deliver report generation in Java, our programmers apply Apache POI. Alternatively, an open-source Java report generation framework or library can be used – say, JFreeChart, JasperReports, or Eclipse BIRT. Usually, they have an API to implement the desired programming functions.

As for .Net development, Microsoft stack has all the necessary instruments for this.

An output file can be in any format – a .PDF document, a text, or an image. If reports are needed in .PDF, we usually develop this functionality from scratch.

As to ISS Art experience in report generation, we have something to tell. We embedded this feature in a prognostic app for manufacturing companies. This product deals with an enormous data amounts, so, the necessity to build various reports upon request is quite obvious.

One more example of delivering the possibility of report generation in Java apps is a SaaS product for construction management. Working with huge data sets, this system allows building .PDF reports upon a user request.

Should you have a programming product in mind – feel free to contact us. As we already mentioned above, most apps today assume report generation ability. According to your objectives, we will find out whether using a report generator software java tool or writing this functionality from scratch is the best option.