How to choose a satisfactory report tool

How to choose a satisfactory report tool

 

With the acceleration of Enterprise Informatization, most enterprises require a lot of application software, and most of the application software requires a report module. As a key basic part of the report tool in the market is also emerging, dazzling, domestic and foreign add up, carefully count, fear there are 20 or 30 kinds. It seems to be similar again, which causes a lot of trouble to select a report tool.

 

Report tools in the industry can be divided into two types in terms of technology. One type is based on SQL/OLAP (SQL reports for short, also called Canvas reports ), you can create reports automatically based on databases or data warehouses. Representative products are mainly foreign, such as crystalreport, stylereport of Java, Bo, Brio, Cognos, microstrategy, and actuate, the world's top bi products) among others; there are many well-known low-end controls in China, such as mingyu, shuju, Jie table, Bi and Qin, Bo Yi zhisoft, and finett.

 

Another type uses excel as the prototype (cell report for short), which mainly solves the report format and display problems. It basically has no or is very simple with the data interface of the database, the statistical data in the report must be calculated by the program code and then filled in the table. In fact, such products should strictly belong to spreadsheet software and have nothing to do with business intelligence. In China, many of these products are cell components and plug-ins of Yonghua table, ejungrid controls and plug-ins of Yijun software, and Formula One abroad, the latter has been acquired by actuate and transformed into a product called spreadsheet. Currently, there is no Chinese version, which is not suitable for Complicated Reports in China. The former is an excellent work in domestic software, after seven years of development, the product has been very mature and stable, and has been widely used in various industries.

 

The SQL Report tool has a basic feature, that is, the main editing interface is displayed as a bar, which is generally divided into several bar areas in sequence: The title area, the details area, and the statistics area. If there is a group, the group title and group statistics areas are added for each group. In short, the entire editing page is composed of individual areas.

 

A basic feature of cell-type report tools is that the entire interface is composed of cells. Users can design very complex reports according to the Chinese report format. However, because the combination of such reports and databases is not very close, application programmers need to write their own code to complete the report.

 

When examining the report tool, first find out which type of product is used. SQL and Cell reports are two very different types of products. It is basically meaningless to put them together for comparison.

 

Every manufacturer often says that its own software is the most easy-to-use and powerful. All these reporting tools claim that they are better at dealing with Chinese reports than competitors. In fact, each product has advantages and disadvantages, they all have their own fields of expertise. The key is to select the most suitable software based on your needs.

 

Because the style of reports in China is too complex, SQL-type reports are often unable to be completed, while cell-type reports can make very complex Chinese-style reports. Although reports sometimes have to deal with databases, however, if it does not involve complex statistical analysis and data mining, programmers can use code to perfectly combine databases and tables.

 

In addition, printing and output are very important for Chinese-style reports. Here, we recommend an excellent domestic report control-Yijun table control ejungrid, it can not only well design Chinese-style complex reports, but also print and output extremely well. It is also compatible with Excel files and is compatible with formulas in the form of Excel, you can also use custom formulas to expand the formula calculation function.

 

To sum up, if your product requires complex statistical analysis but does not have high requirements on the report format, you can select an SQL Report, it depends on the technical platform of your entire system. If it is a Java platform, you can choose stylereport, and consider other factors such as after-sales service. If your report format is complex without complex statistical analysis and data mining functions, you can perform data analysis through simple programming. I recommend that you use cell-type reports, this type of software can easily print closed table lines, more in line with Chinese habits.