Comparison between JasperReports and iText/iTextpdf

Question

I want to know pros and cons of JasperReports and iText/iTextpdf. Till now, I have been working on JasperReports but now thinking about shifting on iText. Should I change to iText or continue with JasperReports?

I know that for dynamic reports, we should use iText and for reports with static structure, we can use JasperReports and then create pdfs from them. But I still want to know more about both of these.

Answer 1

Jasper is a PDF library using iText for the generation of its PDFs. iText is a library for creating and manipulating PDFs.

If your purpose is to generate reports, I would stick to Jasper. However, if you feel like you are going to generate more PDFs that aren't reports, you could take a look at the iText library.

iText has an amazing book published by Manning called iText in Action 2nd Edition, which covers iText5 if you want to learn more about it. Also check out the official website of iText at itextpdf.com

Answer 2

JasperReports is a Business Intelligence / Reporting tool that uses an old iText version to create reports. It is distributed by JasperSoft / TIBCO. JasperReports only uses a limited part of the complete iText functionality. Creating PDF is just one of many features of JasperReports, and JasperSoft uses iText to implement that feature.

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iText is a library that can be used by developers to enhance their web and other applications with PDF functionality: create PDF, fill out PDF forms, examine and manipulate existing PDFs.

Source:

• http://developers.itextpdf.com/question/what-difference-between-itext-jasperreports-and-adobe-lc
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/15537779/1793718