From ireport to Jaspersoft Studio

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Starting with version 5.5, Jaspersoft Studio will replace ireport as the official JasperReports designer. IReport maintenance deadline until the end of 2015, it means that no new features will be added to the iReport, but some key bug fixes and updates will be made. Fortunately, the Eclipse-based Jaspersoft Studio is also open source, free! yeah!

Jaspersoft Studio is a report designer developed specifically for the JasperReports reporting engine and is a complete refactoring of the ireport designer, based on the Eclipse platform. It allows you to create very complex layouts that include charts, pictures, subreports, crosstab, and more. You can read data through JDBC, tablemodels, JavaBeans, XML, Hibernate, CSV, or a custom data source. You can export a report to PDF, RTF, XML, XLS, CSV, HTML, XHTML, text, docx, or OpenOffice.

Report life cycle (Reporting lifecycle)

The life cycle of reports in ireport and Jaspersoft studio is the same.

When you use ireport or Jaspersoft studio to make a report, you create a jrxml file that is an XML document that contains the report layout definition. The layout is fully visualized so that you can ignore the infrastructure of the Jrxml file. Before executing the report, Jrxml must compile a binary file that is famous as Jasper. The Jasper file is required for the application to generate the report.

There are many data source types. You can query from SQL queries, XML files, CSV files, HQL (Hibernate query Language) queries, JavaBeans collections, etc. If you do not have a suitable data source, JasperReports allows you to write your own custom data source. With Jasper files and data sources, JasperReports can generate the document format that the end user wants.

ireport and Jaspersoft Studio allows you to configure data sources and use them to test your reports. In many cases, data-driven wizards can help you quickly design your reports. ireport includes the JasperReports engine itself, allowing you to preview report output, test and optimize your reports.

User Interface (UI)

Jaspersoft Studio has two different versions: a standalone RCP product, and the version of the Eclipse plugin. People who are familiar with eclipse are familiar with the user interface, and those new users, or those who are only familiar with ireport, will find the layout of the display elements very different. Standalone and plug-in versions also have a similar user interface. A preview of the interface including the Jaspersoft Studio can be seen below:

Report editing areas (main editing area) , you intuitively drag, position, and resize the reporting elements alignment through the Designer palette (designer palette) .

jaspersoft Studio has a multi-label editor, design , source and  preview :

• design tab : When you open a report file, it allows you to graphically create a report check
• source tab : Contains the Jrxml source code for the report.
• preview tab : Allows you to run report preview after selecting the data source and output format.

Many pages can view data:

• Repository Explorer View: Contains a list of Jasperserver generated connections and available data adapters
• Project Explorer View: List of projects with JasperReports
• Outline View: Shows the full structure of a tree in the form of an outline view report.
• Properties View: is usually one of the basics of any eclipse-based product/plugin. It is usually populated with information about the properties of the actual selected element. That's it, when you select a report element from the main design area (that is, a text field) or from an outline, the view displays its information. Some of these properties can be read-only, but most are editable, modified, and usually notify of changes to the drawn element (for example, the width or height of the element).
• problems View: Displays the problems and errors, such as the correct compilation that can block the report.

Finally, report stateSummary provides useful information about compiling/populating/executing statistics users in reports. The error will be shown here.

The following is a short comparison table that helps users see the main content of ireport and Jaspersoft studio.

IReport Designer	Jaspersoft Studio
Jasperserver Repository	Repository Explorer
Report Inspector	Outline View
Report Designer	Report Editing Area
Problems List	Problems view
Elements Palette	Designer Palette
Formatting tools	Available via context menu on the element
property sheet	Properties View
Styles Library	---
---	Project Explorer
IReport Designer Output window	Report State Summary

Reference: http://community.jaspersoft.com/wiki/introduction-jaspersoft-studiohttp://community.jaspersoft.com/project/ Ireport-designer