Preface

If you want to create easily understood, professional, and powerful reports from disordered, scattered data using a free, open source Java class library, this book on JasperReports is what you are looking for. JasperReports is the world's most popular embeddable Java open source reporting library, providing Java developers with the power to create rich print and web reports easily.

JasperReports allows you to create better looking reports with formatting and grouping, as well as adding graphical elements to your reports. You can also export your reports to a range of different formats, including PDF and XML. Creating reports becomes easier with the iReport Designer visual designing tool. To round things off, you can integrate your reports with other Java frameworks, using Spring or Hibernate to get data for the report, and Java Server Faces or Struts for presenting the report.

This book shows you how to get started and develop the skills to get the most from JasperReports. The book has been fully updated to use JasperReports 3.5, the latest version of JasperReports. The previously accepted techniques that have now been deprecated have been replaced with their modern counterparts in this latest version. All the examples in this book have been updated to use XML schemas for report templates. Coverage of new datasources that JasperReports now supports has been added to the book. Additionally, JasperReports can now export reports to even more formats than before, and exporting reports to these new formats is covered in this new edition of the book.

The book steers you through each point of report setup, to creating, designing, formatting, and exporting reports with data from a wide range of datasources, and integrating JasperReports with other Java frameworks.