Comments on four mainstream Web report tools

Source: http://blog.ccw.com.cn/blog.php? Do-showone-uid-148267-itemid-14917-type-blog-type-blog.html

Currently, there are four mainstream Web Report tools on the market: Crystal Reports, Style Report, Max @ X Reports, and dry Report.

Basic Information

Crystal Reports were the first to enter the Chinese market. In the early stage, Microsoft's development tool VB integrated this product, so it is currently the most well-known report product, whether in the international or domestic market, there are a large number of users. Its design model adoptsBand distributionDesign the model and draw reports by placing controls in different areas, which provides excellent scalability and adaptability.

Style Report is the earliest Java Report product. It can be regarded as the originator of Java reports and is also the most well-known pure Java Report tool on the international market. With excellent real-time performance of high concurrency, the Olympic Games provided a real-time and quick score publishing system for thousands of visitors from all over the world. Because of its late entry into the Chinese market, it is not well known among domestic users and is currently mainly concentrated in some large and high-end report application fields, such as banking and communications. Its design model adoptsTableDesign the model, similar to Excel.

The report is a domestic report product that has been honed by the market for many years. It is one of the main products in the domestic report tool market. The design end adopts C ++ development, and the server adopts Java Development. It also takes into account the humanization and portability of the design. In its design modelBand distribution+TableThe design model gives full play to the scalability of the band model and the quick design capability of the table model.

Rundry reports are a dark horse in the report market in the past two years. They are pure Java reports (both the designer and server adopt Java Development) and adoptTableDesign the model. Runqian Report is the first product in China to promote multi-data source Association and cross-feature to the product strategy, so it quickly becomes famous in the industry.

Crystal Report

Crystal Report is the pioneer in the domestic report market. It entered the Chinese market as early as 1990s, and programmers who used VB did not know about it. Its design style has almost become the standard of the design model of the band distribution. Many products, including Microsoft's Reporting Servers and several giant reports, were designed in almost all early versions based on the operating style of the Crystal Reports.

In terms of Western-style report production, Crystal Reports have reached the ultimate level. Through the combination of graphical interfaces and VB Script, almost no Western-style reports can be designed. More importantly, Crystal Reports have always been excellent in server efficiency optimization.

In addition, in the past two years, in order to realize localization in a true sense, the crystal report has strengthened its R & D capabilities to meet the demand of the Chinese market and used a large number of R & D personnel with a Chinese cultural background in the R & D team, we hope to save the market disadvantage in the interface style and functional model. The R & D center in Vancouver, Canada is mainly engaged by excellent Chinese software developers. For example, WU Ju, the main engineer, participated in the development of the first version of the crystal report in 1992. Today, he has become the chief designer of BusinessObjects's Crystal Report products and the chief developer of other important business intelligence products. Another example is Le weiliang, a programmer who participated in Crystal Report R & D in 1995. Now he has become the R & D Director of BusinessObjects Chinese R & D department.

After being acquired by BO, Crystal Report has abandoned the need to expand to the full line of BI functions, and began to focus on integration with other BO products. The biggest advantage of using Crystal Reports is that once the customer needs to develop the pure report function to the complete BI function, BO will be used as technical support, and this transition and migration will become abnormal and easy, the technical risks of enterprises will be greatly reduced. This is one of the reasons why many users choose crystal.

With the strength and importance of Crystal Reports, and the powerful market and technical advantages of BO in the field of business intelligence, Crystal Reports may give us an old legend.

Style Report

Style Report is the world's first pure Java Report tool. It seems that it is not too much to describe it with the beginning of Java reports. Style Report is not good at market promotion, and is not well known among domestic users due to its late entry into the Chinese market. However, this does not prevent the penetration and Application of Style reports in high-end application fields.

As the earliest Java Report, Style Report is constantly challenged by competitors. This challenge has helped Style Report to maintain its leading edge in the industry. With the help of global development, Style Report can obtain the latest technological developments at any time and use it as the compass for product development. One fact proves that Style Report was first designed based on open standards such as XML, J2EE, JavaScript, and SOAP. Currently, all Java reports on the market are followers in this regard.

In addition, as a Java open supporter, Style Report also uses openness as the product design standard: The designed reports are saved in XML file format; the Report engine is 100% pure Java; the Script language uses Java scripts, and the transmission protocol uses HTTP, RMI, or Corba. These laid the foundation for Style Report as an enterprise-level Report development tool.

Style Report not only provides a real-time and quick score publishing system (a real-time system capable of processing a large number of concurrent requests) for thousands of visitors from around the world during the Olympic Games ), operation Supporting System (OSS )) thousands of customers provide reports from several pages to thousands of pages every day from daily operations to decision support and analysis. In fact, thousands of customers around the world are using Style reports to meet their various and multi-choice Report requirements: you can go to the contract signed by the National Baseball Association and the players, the freight label attached to the parcel carried by FedEx, and the power grid management system developed by ABB for the Asian market. reports on real-time product qualification rates generated in the GE Medical Equipment Department's internal sales management system, China Shanghai Telecom's ERP system, and even Motorola's mobile phone production lines every few minutes in the future, all customers of the Power bureaus in some areas of China will be on the electricity bill printed every month, you can see Style Rep. Ort.

Therefore, although Style Report is not good at marketing, it can be seen in many large application fields in China thanks to its technical strength.

Massive reports

It is one of the earliest companies engaged in Web report tool R & D in China and also a competitive product in the domestic report market. It is interesting to analyze this enterprise and product.

First of all, it can well grasp the characteristics and needs of domestic report design. the flexible report model and post-interactive report model proposed by several large reports all grasp the key needs of domestic users, so soon after the product was launched, it attracted industry attention.

The second is that it has a strong learning capability. Once new features of similar products emerge, you can quickly find this function in the upgraded version of the huge report, therefore, its function upgrade frequency is the highest among similar products. Generally, there will be a version upgrade in about three months.

Third, it never performs standard adventures. Compared with the standard selection attitude of similar products, the attitude of several massive reports is often the same. For example, in the selection of the table model and the band distribution model, the crystal Report selects the band model and the Style Report selects the table model. The two models have their own advantages. Massive reports adopt a very pragmatic attitude, that is, they integrate two models in a product and give the options to users (you can do it yourself, use whatever you think is appropriate ).

Another important reason for the success of several large reports is the high-end technology, which is inspired by the successful modes of the Crystal Report and Style Report: the crystal Report is not just a Report tool, it is also an integral part of BO's business intelligence product line. Style Report not only provides Report technology, but also provides a lightweight OLAP engine that can meet the needs of OLAP analysis in general situations. Likewise, a report is not an isolated product, but a part of a Business Intelligence System (Max @ X Analyser. In this way, when you need to extend the simple report function to BI, you can avoid changing the report product, retain the original development results, and achieve smooth application transition.

Credit report

When it comes to domestic report tools, the profit report is definitely a product worth attention. In terms of combining technical cognition with market operation, runqian's tactics are definitely worth a classic case study.

I have to admit that the business vision of rundry reports is very sharp. It is the first to find that multi-data source associated cross tabulation is a very common report style during the design of domestic reports, and quickly promote this feature to a strategic perspective, so that the profit reports can quickly emerge in the market.

In propaganda techniques, the first step is to build a technical card. The multi-data-source cross-tabulation function enables a very technical name "linear Report" and repeatedly stresses the importance and revolutionary significance of linear reports in media and technical forums. For this reason, Jiang busxing, the chairman of the board of directors, wrote an article entitled "thank you for mathematics", which attributed the discovery of this demand to the study of mathematics. This kind of academic propaganda strategy quickly resonates with customers, thus laying the market foundation for profit reports.

Secondly, runqian reports will push technical R & D personnel to the marketing Frontline, systematically sort out the concept of "linear Report", from principle to implementation effect, by giving full play to the knowledge of the technical staff, the time linear report has become an important level for measuring the report product quality.

Third, on this basis, the rundry report reported a higher price than all similar products, instantly forming a sensation. Although this is just a quote, it can be up to or in actual operations, but for marketing, the goal has been achieved and the price is a sensation, as well as the focus of product promotion, the high-end image of the rundry report is rapidly becoming full.

Then, after building the brand awareness, runqian report soon launched a new product, quick report. This product is priced at 3000 yuan and is one of the cheapest products on the market except open-source software. The purpose of the market operator is to establish a high-end product image at the high price of the statement, and to fully expand the market at the low price of the quick report to obtain cash income.

To avoid conflicts between the left and right sides, the low-end products enable new brands. The new product uses the rundry report as a reference, removing the support for new reports. Runqian hopes to use this product to fully open the market at low-end prices. However, the problem is that the advantage of rundry reports lies in the user's recognition of linear reports. The product will be poor. Therefore, if you lose the fast and convenient reports supported by new reports, even though sales have already been produced under the brand halo of runxi reports, it is rather difficult to win the game if you want to make full use of the reports. If linear reports are re-granted to this low-price product, how can they be sold as a low-price product's profit report. This is a dilemma.

Another problem that may limit the further expansion of profit reports is the difficulty of learning. Runqian reports have always emphasized the deep knowledge of designers in mathematics. However, it is such a factor that leads to the extremely abstract usage of runqian reports and a very simple problem in the eyes of product designers, when it comes to users, it often takes a long time to think about how to do it, which makes it difficult for users to learn. It is no wonder that some users complain that a simple function that uses the Count function to rank the Times has actually been written on five pages in the rundry statement.

Among several typical products, the rundry report is the most controversial product. Supporters think that it brings a new atmosphere to the development of the report market. Those who hold a negative attitude think that runqian reports are insufficient in R & D, and it may be difficult to last long by means of marketing alone. We have to wait and see what the facts are.