Pentaho: how to create complex reports

Question

I have to build a complex report (e.g. header, text and multiple lists and charts, arranged here and there on multiple pages). Something like a complex invoice.

I've found no examples on the net for such reports in Pentaho.

I tried with subreports, but it results in 30 nested subreports, which I think is not good.

The main issue is that I have structured data and I do not feel confortable in transforming that in plain rowsets. Indeed, I'd prefer retrieving data from a web service.

So, is Pentaho the right tool? How can I achieve my goal? (and... is Stckoverflow the right place to post this question?)

Answer 1

The bottom line is that you do need all those sub-reports.

In Pentaho Report Designer only 1 query can be active. Other queries may be used for parameter selectors, but the actual data for the report always comes from the 1 active query.

So, if you want 1 table and 1 chart you need 2 active queries, which means you need 2 sub-reports, one for the chart and another for the table. If you have multiple charts, you need 1 sub-report for each one, which may result in very large number of sub-reports.