Pentaho: how to create complex reports

Question

I need to compile a complex report (for example, a heading, text, and several lists and diagrams placed here and there on several pages). Something like a complicated account.

I did not find any examples on the net for such reports at Pentaho.

I tried with signatures, but this leads to 30 nested subreports, which I think are not very good.

The main problem is that I have structured data and I don’t feel comfortable converting this to simple sets of strings. Indeed, I would prefer to receive data from a web service.

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

Answer 1

The bottom line is that you need all of these sub-reports.

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

So, if you need 1 table and 1 chart, you need 2 active queries, which means that you need 2 sub-reports, one for the chart and the other for the table. If you have several charts, each of them requires 1 subtask, which can lead to a very large number of sub-reports.