Comparison of Finereport reports and Crystal Reports

Comparison of Finereport reports and Crystal Reports

Finereport report software for the complex format of the report data and the presentation of the Web report, through multi-source sharding, irregular grouping, two-way extension to easily drag and drop to do complex format of the report, making reports from the complex SQL and expression, do not need programming, greatly improve the efficiency of the report production.

The Finereport report has obvious advantages over the Crystal report, whether it is in the form of report design, data presentation, or forms, application integration, etc.

Report Design

In the aspect of report design, the advantages of Finereport report tools are mainly embodied in the following aspects:

• Multiple data sources

  Finereport Report Design natural support multi-data source (set), the data of the same report can come from multiple data tables at the same time, multiple different databases, or many different user-defined views of the data, and then in the report can be directly to each other to form the final report.

  and a variety of ways to connect data sources, support Jdbc,jndi data sources, such as oracle,db2,sqlserver,mysql, such as mainstream databases, custom program data sources, text data sources, hibernate data sources, remedy and so on, At the same time the data source has unlimited extensibility, can support WEBSERVICE,SOA and other standard data.

  The Crystal Report supports only a single data set in theory, and support for multiple sets relies on the operational capabilities of the database (Fork and union, or write stored procedures), which are generally difficult to support. Another way of processing is to put multiple data sources in a disguised form into a single data source, and then other operations, not the real meaning of the multi-data source.

• Grouping adjustments, not fully grouped

  Grouping is the most common way of reporting data. The grouping of the Finereport report tools is based on the cell, so deleting the grouping, changing the grouping field, and so on, only needs to manipulate the cell, regardless of the other data in the report. In addition, in many cases, the data is not an enumeration of the complete grouping, but some fixed column, or in the form of grouping, Finereport report provides user-defined groups, only need to add some conditions, you can achieve the purpose of irregular grouping.

  Crystal Report, all the data are divided into strips of the model, delete the group will be related to the group Summary unit deleted, adjust the Group field can only delete the reconstruction, the whole operation is cumbersome, and will cause duplication of work. The irregular grouping, in the Crystal Report, simply modifies the group name and cannot modify other calculations that follow the data.

• Data expansion and cross-table

  Finereport Report Tool data expansion, is bidirectional, that is, the row and column symmetry, horizontal longitudinal direction of the ability of the same, you can easily make cross-report (multilayer), can be the same as the same table to make complex table head.

  The Crystal Report produces cross-reports in a specialized crosstab model whose headers are automatically generated by the wizard and lack flexibility.

• Report Shards

  In complex reports, it is very common that the report is divided into multiple pieces, that is, the entire report is a large, regular report, but can actually be divided into a number of irregular small areas, each region seems to have no connection, but the data can actually be interconnected. Finereport supports multiple data sources, as well as the column-to-row scaling of the data, so that the pieces of the report support independent duplication or mutual computation, and allow the blending of fixed and variable shards.

  The single-table model of the Crystal Report does not support sharding. For the report of the Shard, one kind of processing method is to prepare the data in advance, and the other is to complete by the sub-report stitching. The processing is quite cumbersome, and neither of these treatments can meet the requirements each time, designing the desired report format.

• Cross-ROW group operations

  Reports often require operations that span groups of rows, such as the previous period, the same period last year, and so on. The cell-level coordinate concept of the Finereport report can accurately refer to any one of the expanded cells and then generally write out the expressions for these cross-row group operations.

  Crystal Reports can only simply support certain fixed cross-line operations, such as cumulative values, higher than previous periods, and more complex cross-row group calculations that can be programmed to prepare data in advance.

Report Presentation and output

• class Excel interface style

  Finereport Report Tool interface style, is completely similar to Excel, grid alignment editing, greatly facilitates the design and output of the report, and the cell properties are more free and flexible, You can get a report of any complexity in the format. The

  Crystal Report is a control-drag-and-drop report that does not reflect the regularity of the table and is cumbersome to align when the header is complex. and resolution-related, on-screen alignment of the table, on the Web page and printing can not be aligned. The

• input Output

  Finereport report supports single or bulk import of Excel files, which can be used by business people to draw a sample in advance, improve the efficiency of making reports, and, in bulk, reduce duplication of effort. The resulting report file can be exported as HTML, non-distorted PDFs, Excel, Word, CSV, SVG, and text files in a variety of styles. In addition, built-in template files can be generated. The

  Crystal Report cannot support importing Excel files and can only read data from Excel. Its generated HTML generally only support IE, the export of Excel often only the loss of formatting data, the individual tools are more careful, but also heavily dependent on the level of alignment when the table is drawn, the resulting text will only include data and loss of format, can not support the character Terminal report printing needs.

• set dozen

  Finereport report is depicted in the basemap, the absolute positioning of the way to complete the set of the drawing of the sample, the user can be set to hit the ticket scanned in as a background map, with the Report Designer data placement, you can pinpoint the location of the data. The Crystal Report of the

  can only be used to measure the size of the table control by using the method of accuracy, which is cumbersome and inefficient.

• paginated printing, columns, and other print controls

  Finereport provides all of the report printing controls: Force paging in groups or any other way to make up blank lines.

  The title can be repeated when paging, not only the table header, the table is wider, the left header can also be set to repeat when paging.

  Data can be free columns, longer reports, can be displayed as columns in rows, more than one column, and columns can be used to display multiple rows to the same page.

  Crystal report, usually can only support the above table header repetition, can not be forced paging, fill blank lines, columns and other operations.

Form

A form's backfill is a feature that Crystal Reports cannot support at all. Finereport supports form backfill based on pure HTML and supports a variety of mainstream browsers.

• Editing style

  The form provides normal text edit boxes, checkboxes, drop-down list boxes, drop-down calendars, file uploads, and so on.

• Automatic calculation

  Forms can support Excel-like automatic calculations, which are automatically calculated based on the user's settings to generate JavaScript expressions on the front-end. Automatic calculation can also cross the table, multi-sheet between the operations.

• Data consistency check

  Support for legality checking of backfill data.

• Extension of data

  Allows report cells to be arbitrarily mapped to database fields and has the ability to scale automatically. Supports form backfill data in any format.

• Backfill directly to the database

  Users fill in the data, are directly stored in the database, without intermediate links.

• Multi-level summary reporting

  The report of the form is also a statistical table, the cell data can have a different source and whereabouts, so you can first summarize the data from the subordinate agencies and then add the changes to fill in the parent database.

  The Finereport report is 10 times times more efficient than traditional reporting tools represented by foreign products.

contrast Point		FineReport	Crystalreport
Application integration	Background support for the environment	Pure Java, full support	Individual products only support Windows
	Environmental support at the front desk	Pure HTML, full support	Typically only IE is supported
	Application Server Management for Java EE	Embed applications to take full advantage of application server capabilities	Standalone server, application server capability not available
	Web Deployment of Java EE	Unified Deployment with Applications	Installation and deployment of individual, cumbersome operation
	Application interface of the Java EE	Rich and complete, combined tightly	Through the network protocol, the intensity is insufficient, the chart often uses the ancient CGI way
	Java Application Integration	Support	Non-pure Java not supported
	. NET application integration	Support, independent service	Support
	Integration of pages	Completely arbitrary embedding	Independent portal, very difficult
	User Rights control	Consistent with Application	The independent mechanism is cumbersome
	IDE Integration Capabilities	Limited support	Not supported
	Concurrency capabilities	Strong, 40,000 unit Gerzo in 512M of memory can be more than 50 concurrent	The underlying program has high memory requirements and fewer concurrent numbers
Data design	Multi-data source (set)	Direct	Indirect support
	Full Grouping (multilayer)	Support	Support, more cumbersome
	Full Crossover (multilayer)	Support, no special handling	Support, with a specialized crossover model
	Not fully grouped/fixed rows	Support	Preparing data for programming
	Up and down shards	Support, up and down format inconsistent, fixed change mix	Format-consistent programmable preparation data, otherwise you must complete the spelling of the child table
	Left and right shards	Support, fixed change mixing, high direct computing performance	Fixed-column programmable preparation data, with DB fork-multiply performance is poor
	Cross-ROW group operations	Support, Casual Universal	Fixed simple cross-row operation, not supported across groups
	Independent lattice operations	Support, Casual Universal	Fixed several operations, from the DB to be specially processed
	Master-Slave reporting	Complete without the sub-table concept	Must use sub-table, data cannot communicate
	Child table	Multi-layer arbitrary, grid alignment can be scaled, horizontal longitudinal can be automatically placed	General two-level, horizontal table can not be automatically placed
	Parameters and macros	are supported	Only parameters supported
Report Presentation	Basic Scenarios	Excel Web format for quick and easy	control style, alignment cumbersome
	Import Excel	Support	Not supported
	Set Dozen Draw	Basemap depicts	Precision Quantity
	Report output format	Standard Html,pdf,word completely undistorted Excel with Rich Text	PDF, special HTML, lost format Excel, unformatted text
	Chart output format	Gif,jpg,png	Gif,jpg
	Print page-out columns	Horizontal vertical can be, forcing paging	Vertical only and non-columnar
	Other print controls	Multi-page, blank line, zoom	Scaling
Form	Editing style	Text editing, drop-down selection, etc.	Not supported
	Automatic calculation	Support
	Legality check	Support
	Database correspondence	Random automatic, Row/column/crossover can be
	Multi-level summary reporting	Support

Deployment and application integration

• Web Deployment

  The service program for the Finereport reporting tool appears as a jar package and can be deployed on the application server together with the application, which is very easy to install.

  A standalone server scenario for Crystal Reports needs to be installed separately, and the report files must be deployed separately to be updated with the application.

• Support for the environment

  The Finereport report is developed in pure Java, regardless of whether Report Designer or server supports all deployable JDK operating systems, databases with JDBC interfaces, and specifically for unix/linux support is exactly the same as for Windows. Reporting tools that are not Java are much more difficult in this regard.

• A rich API interface

  The Finereport Reporting tool provides the application programmer with a structured, Rich Java API call to extend and depth control of the report.

  Crystal Report uses a standalone server scheme, the application interface is completed through the network protocol, the number of interfaces is sparse, the control is weak, and the performance is seriously affected. HTML external resources, such as charts, often use the original CGI method, leaving temporary files that are difficult to manage in the file system.

• Integration of pages

  The HTML generated by the Finereport report can be embedded in the Application page (JSP), which is completely invisible to the third-party product that is integrated from the browser.

  Crystal Report has its own independent portal mechanism, it is difficult to embed the generated HTML arbitrarily into the page, often must bring out the report management interface of its products, it is difficult to seamlessly embed.

Comparison of Finereport reports and Crystal Reports