Is there another tool out there for building oracle reports other then oracle reports builder? [closed]

Question

I cant stand oracle reports builder. Its constantly crashing and sucking in general. Copying and pasting stuff only sometimes works. Elements visualy look selected after you unselect them. AARRRRRRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I need another tool. Are their any alternatives for designing the report jsps?

Answer 1

This is an old thread but here my take on it. For experienced developers (I should point out that I am one), Oracle Reports is unbelievably productive tool. For new developers, it can be baffling and frustrating. I have been in the "market" for an Oracle Reports alternative for some time now and have yet to find a tool that can do what Oracle Reports can do for me. The tools I have looked at:

• Oracle BI Publisher: Officially, this is the successor to Oracle Reports. One day it will be as good as Oracle Reports...right now it primarily uses MS Word as the report designer. Its not fun to to wrestle with Word (nested) tables (which replaces frames). I would prefer Reports Frames any day.

• Pentaho: I looked at this with minor interest, it's commercial open source and I thought did a pretty good job. Not sure how it scales and like all open source projects, is at the mercy of an active community.

• MicroStrategy: This is again a very seasoned product. BI is their bread and butter and so I would expect that its pretty good. I had a vendor do a POC and they replicated one of my most complex "Form" type reports (a business document, bill-of-lading). The price however it at enterprise level (read: very pricy). Although for departmental deployments they have a 'free' version.

• Microsoft Reporting: This one has good promise but it is sold primarily with MS SQL Server and I being an Oracle-guy has felt internal resistance to this tool. One of these days I will overcome it when the Reports Builder has crashed one too many times.

There are scores of others like JasperReports, Actuate, Business Objects (Crystal), Information Builders etc.