Reporting Services

This project purpose is to provide reporting services

for enterprises applications in a simple way.

All reports are deployed in JBoss as a file or an archive and then

become available for applications to execute.

In J2EE environment, security checks can be applied.

Reporting Services will be available for several underlying

report engines (ie. JasperReports, JFreeReport ...)

Services

• security checking

• executing

• scheduling

• distributing

• storing executed reports

• notifying when report is available

• providing the scheduled reports list filtered by the caller's roles

• report caching ?

+(special case of execution: scheduling is set in metadata, then

when apps execute report, execute instruction are ignored, last

execution date should be available )+

• versioning reports, executed reports ?

• automatic report generation ?

Enterprise Report Archive (xxx.era)

It's a J2EE-like module where metadata are added to a set of reports.

Then, they are deployed inside JBoss to be used from J2EE applications thru

a simple API.

Metadata

     <reports>
          <default>
               <datasource></datasource>
               <parameters ></parameters>
               <execute>
                    <schedule></schedule>
                    <output-format></output-format>
                    <distribute></distribute>
               </execute>
          </default>

          <security-constraints (a la web.xml)></security-constraints>

          <report>
               <name>/aaa/bbb/myReport</name>
               <datasource></datasource>
               <parameters ></parameters>
               <execute>
                    <schedule></schedule>
                    <output-format></output-format>
                    <distribute></distribute>
               </execute>
          </report>

          <!--
          |  start dreaming ... 
          -->
          <automatic-report>
               <name>/aaa/bbb/myReport</name>
               <ejb-jndi-name>
               <ejb-finder (name, parameters)>
               <ejb-printed-properties>
               <report-model>
          </automatic-report>

          <!-- ??? more dream : will become ejb annotations -->

     </reports>

Client APIs

The shortest : obtain the pdf now.

  byte[] pdf = ReportTaskFactory.getInstance().executeToByteArray("/reports/myReports.era/HelloWorld");

Execute a report in one hour and send the pdf result by mail

  ReportTask rt = ReportTaskFactory.getInstance();
  ret.setReport(     new Report("/reports/myReports.era/HelloWorld")    );
  rt.setSchedule(    new ScheduleOnce( Calendar.newInstance().add(Calendar.HOUR,1) )  );
  rt.setDistribute(  new DistributeByMail("noel.rocher@jboss.org")  );
  rt.execute();

Package could be :

• Report

• ReportTask

• distribute/

•      Distribute (interface)

•      DistributeByMethodReturn

•      DistributeByMail

•      DistributeByFtp

•      DistributeByFileCopy

•      DistributeByJMS

•      DistributeByPrinter

•      ...

• output/

•      OutputFormat   

• schedule/

•      Schedule (interface)

•      ScheduleOnce

•      ScheduleNow

•      SchedulePeriodic

•      ScheduleEventListener ?

Plus an administration part that will allow shceduling and right managment

• admin/

•    ...

Reports Console (JSF)

• browse deployed reports (report explorer)

• execute/schedule a report

• managing scheduled reports

• deploy new reports

JSF Components

Allowing to enter a report's parameters, scheduling, output format and distribution data.

A set of component should be developed to fit the simplest case (execute now with these parameters) and

the most complex one (all could be provided by the user).

Underlying Technology

• JasperReports, JFreeReport

• Deployers, Service, ServiceListener

• JBoss Remoting