Salesforce has a built-in reporting tool which is good. I need something similar to the salesforce reporting tools to embed to our web-based application (java, xhtml). The reporting tool must be able to display flat data, drag and drop dataset fields, group, sort, summarize (sum, average, max, min). Any recommendations?
Hope it can be still helpful for you or someone with the same request.
WebDataRocks, can be a good fit. It's free and, I'd say, easy in use. It's web based reporting tool, easy integrated and has all common Excel-like features, which are needed for pivoting: drag and drop dataset fields, grouping, sorting, summarizing( sum, average, max, min) etc.
You сan check out the demo (https://www.webdatarocks.com/demos/javascript-pivot-table-demo/) and deside if it fits you.
Good luck!
You can try with DBxtra, which it's a BI tool, who contains a web component and that it can be embedded into another web application (using the Web Report Widgets component), it can also connect effortlessly to a DB2 database either directly or through ODBC; however, please note that it runs on the .NET Framework, and at the moment it's Windows only, so depending of the requirements of your end users, it may or may not be useful in your use case.
P.S.: I'm a DBxtra evangelist.
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I've been mandated to find out what IBM Cognos does, and I cannot find useful information on the subject apart what I can read from the IBM Website and Wikipedia.
What I'm after is some concrete examples of what Cognos can do for businesses and organisations that intend to use it.
Financial Performance Management I have no idea about but we use BI 8.4/10.1 quite a bit. The Cognos product line is actually quite large and we only really use the baseline BI stuff with Framework Manager but I'll try and help you out, based on how we use it.
Think of BI itself as an application that lets you view your data in many different ways. Now so far, it's no different to Jasper Reports or BIRT (which, despite its name, appears to provide very little BI stuff).
It does this by modelling the data (models are created with Framework Manager hence why we use it over and above the standard reporting interface) to translate raw data into business data and also relational to dimensional data if your database isn't already dimensional.
It's this business view of the data combined with the dimensionality which allows really neat manipulation within Cognos BI.
You can create reports in a truly multi-dimensional way, aggregating data in various ways across things like dates, products, geographical regions, stores, divisions and so on (depending on your dimensional setup).
All of the reports are really dynamic in that you can collapse or expand individual dimensions at will so, if for example you want to drill down on a poorly-performing state to see which individual stores in that state are causing problems, it's a simple click on an icon.
No re-querying of the data, everything just happens in very quick time. And the charts and data that can be produced are very nice.
And, on top of that, Cognos BI comes with an inbuilt query studio and report studio which allow the creation of ad-hoc reports in the exact same interface the user sees when running standard reports. No more of the Eclipse-Designer/Web-App separation that we had to endure with BIRT.
Sorry if this sounds evangelistic but we're transitioning from BIRT to Cognos BI, and the difference is substantial.
Now you may not find a lot of information outside of the IBM website, although we did find a couple of dedicated sites when we first started examining the transition. Unfortunately, I don't have them available any more since the IBM information is more than adequate.
We also make a lot of use of the IBM developerWorks forums (we use Tivoli Common Reporting which ships with the Cognos runtimes) and the microsite as well. As well as the forums, there's a whole section of developerWorks dedicated to Cognos.
A bit late, but for the benefit of anyone browsing ... Cognos BI is essentially web based reporting/ dashboarding/ analytics. Historically it connected to relational databases only; from v8.4 onwards (and moreso from v10) it also connects to OLAP cube data sources. It's designed for end user self service reporting and includes mobile as well as web connectivity.
Cognos FPM provides in-server memory OLAP cube modelling (based on the TM1 engine). A key point of difference is that it permits end-user writeback and is generally used for budgeting and 'what-if' scenario modelling. Modelling is facilitated by Rules, which enable data modification. It also scales to the max. As noted above it may be integrated to Cognos BI (as well as being stand-alone), which means that a single dashboard may include reports from both relational & OLAP sources, and provide planning. So it's very powerful.
Note that Cognos Express provides essentially the same tools for the midmarket.
A little late but in case anyone else comes here and is looking for information, I would like to enhance #paxdiablo's answer. He was talking only about Modeling and reporting tool which is the best known Cognos.
There is also a powerful tool named Metric Studio which can track in an easy way, how business is performing. This tool is IMHO the best of the Cognos Suite, since it is truly BI for the high management.
Another thing that I love from Cognos (been using it since 2004) is the administration. From an IT perspective it is way easier to make things happen in Cognos rather than any other tool I've seen (BO included).
Just to name a few: you can link row-filtering with LDAP information (e.g. roles and customers); burst reporting through cognos content or email... the possibilities are huge.
I was looking for ETL tool and on google found lot about Pentaho Kettle.
I also need a Data Analyzer to run on Star Schema so that business user can play around and generate any kind of report or matrix. Again PentaHo Analyzer is looking good.
Other part of the application will be developed in java and the application should be database agnostic.
Is Pentaho good enough or there are other tools I should check.
Pentaho seems to be pretty solid, offering the whole suite of BI tools, with improved integration reportedly on the way. But...the chances are that companies wanting to go the open source route for their BI solution are also most likely to end up using open source database technology...and in that sense "database agnostic" can easily be a double-edged sword. For instance, you can develop a cube in Microsoft's Analysis Services in the comfortable knowledge that whatver MDX/XMLA your cube sends to the database will be intrepeted consistently, holding very little in the way of nasty surprises.
Compare that to the Pentaho stack, which will typically end interacting with Postgresql or Mysql. I can't vouch for how Postgresql performs in the OLAP realm, but I do know from experience that Mysql - for all its undoubted strengths - has "issues" with the types of SQL that typically crops up all over the place in an OLAP solution (you can't get far in a cube without using GROUP BY or COUNT DISTINCT). So part of what you save in licence costs will almost certainly be used to solve issues arising from the fact the Pentaho doesn't always know which database it is talking to - robbing Peter to (at least partially) pay Paul, so to speak.
Unfortunately, more info is needed. For example:
will you need to exchange data with well-known apps (Oracle Financials, Remedy, etc)? If so, you can save a ton of time & money with an ETL solution that has support for that interface already built-in.
what database products (and versions) and file types do you need to talk to?
do you need to support querying of web-services?
do you need near real-time trickling of data?
do you need rule-level auditing & counts for accounting for every single row
do you need delta processing?
what kinds of machines do you need this to run on? linux? windows? mainframe?
what kind of version control, testing and build processes will this tool have to comply with?
what kind of performance & scalability do you need?
do you mind if the database ends up driving the transformations?
do you need this to run in userspace?
do you need to run parts of it on various networks disconnected from the rest? (not uncommon for extract processes)
how many interfaces and of what complexity do you need to support?
You can spend a lot of time deploying and learning an ETL tool - only to discover that it really doesn't meet your needs very well. You're best off taking a couple of hours to figure that out first.
I've used Talend before with some success. You create your translation by chaining operations together in a graphical designer. There were definitely some WTF's and it was difficult to deal with multi-line records, but it worked well otherwise.
Talend also generates Java and you can access the ETL processes remotely. The tool is also free, although they provide enterprise training and support.
There are lots of choices. Look at BIRT, Talend and Pentaho, if you want free tools. If you want much more robustness, look at Tableau and BIRT Analytics.
We are migrating our test report data (unit, regression, integration, etc..) from an XML format to a database format for better analysis. Right now the majority of our test analysis is done using the CruiseControl.NET dashboard, but this is limited to primarily the most recent test data. Older test data can be accessed but not easily compared to new test data. We want to pin point problem components and better narrow down bugs. With the onset of tons of information brought on by our newly implemented regression and integration testing I would like to see some better metrics generated (possibly performance and the like). Have you worked with any business intelligence systems that will provide a framework for accurately and easily implementing some sort of analysis and reporting?
I have looked into JasperReports and Pentaho but I'm struggling with implemetation of Pentaho at the moment. Should I continue my fight with the system? Is this what I'm looking for?
You could always just use SQL Server Reporting Services and Report Builder (MS's web based designer) or Report Designer (component of Visual studio). It's pretty easy to get this set up too.
Report Builder: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155933.aspx
Report Designer: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms157166.aspx
Tutorial: http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/beginning-sql-server-2005-reporting-services-part-1/
How to add Reporting Services to an existing SQL Server: http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1444
There are a few end user reporting solutions around as well that make it easier to dynamically create reports, if you're willing to invest a bit of cash.
My company produce one: http://www.rsinteract.com has a very cheap standard edition with a limited number of reports (30 day free trial). It reports directly off SQL server with Reporting Services installed. It won best of TechEd 2006 - http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/53944/best-of-tech-ed-2006-winners.html
We actually use ours to analyse the support requests from clients i.e. which component is failing most, who reports the most bugs etc. Not tried it on test data.
There's also Proclarity, ApexSQL Report, and Tableau all of which are good.
You could try looking at rolling your own (if you know what you're looking for) using Processing written by Ben Fry. It's best accompanied by his book "Visualizing Data".
The tool is free and I guess you can get a free 45 day trial of O'Reilly Books Online to get a head start and see if its right for you. I do know there are chapters on reading and crunching data from all kinds of sources (including XML and databases) and then making meaningful and useful visualisations from them.
I'm currently using it to get my head round the dependency complexities of an inherited code base and its been massively useful.
Which part of Pentaho?
The Kettle project has stuff to convert your Cruise Control info and load it into a relational database. That's probably a good module to get working properly, especially if you're almost done figuring it out. I hope you'll share this stuff. I could use it too.
The Platform will autoschedule stuff once Kettle has it loading.
To make Mondrian really useful you'll need to work out a fact / dimension organization to your test data. That may or may not be worth your trouble at this point.
Once you have your data loaded you'll probably be able to get a lot of benefit out of simple SQL queries like this...
select *
from test
where failed='yes'
order by testno, date desc
and this...
select max(date), min(date), testno
from test
where failed='yes'
group by testno
order by testno
and stuff like that. You might consider creating views in your table server for your favorite queries.
There are myriad ways to convert your sql queries into reports, including the pentaho reporting module, BIRT (an eclipse plugin), Crystal Reports, and all kinds of PHP or JSP stuff you could put together.
I would like to create a report designer that has the same functionality and ease of use as the Visual Studio IDE. The ability to drag controls onto a form, select various subsets of those controls, align left, evenly space, etc.
The only tools I have ever encountered are really bad. Crystal Reports, the MS Access report crapola, ComponentOne, etc. Is there a third party tool that does this right, or do I have to roll my own?
Um, sounds like you want to do ad-hoc reporting. I have never seen one of these done well outside of a COTS product like BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, which I am using right now on one of my projects.
http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/web_intelligence/
I think you'll have to roll your own here.
The problem here is one of balance. Third party reporting tools have to be flexible, open and highly customizable to the whims of every potential user. As a result, these tools end being not usable to a lay person.
That said creating a visual report designer is not a trivial task. So my suggestion would be to distill the user's voice to find the minimal set of functionality (report elements, formatting, etc.) done first in a usable manner... may not be pretty the first time. And then iterate.
I'm working on a similar need and currently evaluating if MS Word with some custom add-ins would get the job done.
Some years ago I used Active Reports from a company called Data Dynamics. It was nice in that it allowed my users to create their own reports - and they loved not having to contact me to create some ad-hoc report. I am sure the product has evolved since 2001, might want to give it a look.
There is an SQL MS Reports Solution. It's called SSRS and you may have heard of it, but what you might not know it there is an OK end user targeted reporting tool. It works especially well if you are using datasets. The reports can be saved as files and run and/or built inside a VS project, within SQL SSRS, or using the free standing tool (i'd start here). They can also be run from a web control. They can export to excel and even PDF I think.
See SQL2008 Tool here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f783224-9871-4eea-b1d5-f3140a253db6&displaylang=en
More info here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Server_Reporting_Services
This is also available in SQL2005 also I believe.
In one of our commercial applications (Win32, written in Delphi) we'd like to implement full text search. The application is storing user data in some kind of binary format that is not directly recognizable as a text.
Ideally, I'd like to find either an in-process solution (DLL would be OK) or a local server that I could access via TCP (preferably). The API should allow me to submit a textual information to the server (along with the metadata representing the binary blob it came from) and, of course, it should allow me to do a full-text search with at least minimal support for logical operators and substring searching. Unicode support is required.
I found extensive list of search engines on Stack Overflow (What are some Search Servers out there?) but I don't really understand which of those engines could satisfy my needs. I thought of asking The Collective for opinion before I spend a day or two testing each of them.
Any suggestions?
There are a number of options on the market. Either fully fledge commercial products or open source variants. Your choice of a search provider is very dependent on the customers you are targetting.
Microsoft has a free Express version of their Search Server. As far as I know the Express edition is limited to running the Application Tier on one server.
There is also the Apache Lucene project which is open source. It has a nice API that's easy to use and a large community of users. The original project is based on Java, but there are also other implementations such as NLucene for .NET that I have used personally.
I'd recommend having a look at SQLite -- full-text search is included in the latest version.
I suppose the answer depends on your db. For example SQL Server has full text search and also English Language Queries if ever needed.
Take a look at using PostgreSQL and tsearch.
Try using postgresql with tsearch
Sphinx is probably the most efficient and scalable option while SQLite - FTS3 is the most straightforward option.
While not in-process, Solr is very fast (based on Lucene) and easily accessible from any platform (HTTP)