Compatible with Jasperreports and iReport

Question

I have been working with Jasperreports for many years, and many versions have been released.

My question is: I have two simple reports in Jasper using version 4.0.2. I tried updating iReport to version 4.7.1 and even compiling it again, I got a NullPointerException .

I updated jasperreports to version 4.7.1 and now it works great.

Such errors are very common when updating the version of iReport. Why can't iReport compile reports into a lower version? Is it so difficult to maintain such compatibility?

Has anyone had this problem before? What is the risk of constantly updating iReport and Jasperreports in the project?

Answer 1

I think it is not surprising that your "old" Jasper is not capable of handling "new" report templates. You can try to avoid this without updating iReport (since there is no reason if you are working with only one version).

But if you need to maintain reports that run in different versions of JasperReports, iReport has a reduced compatibility mode, which can be accessed through additional functions → options → the General tab → compatibility.

Hope this helps.

From my experience, I don’t need to constantly update JasperReports or iReport if you do not encounter problems and do not need the new features provided in newer versions. "Never touch a running system."