Re: FOSS Reporting tools (was Oracle 10g Express - any danger for Postgres?)

On Wed, Nov 02, 2005 at 05:26:56PM -0700, Trent Shipley wrote:
> I never really used SQL*Plus as a command line tool. I tended to use it as a
> weak SQL scripting language.
>
> Granted report generators can't be part of core PostgreSQL, they are still a
> critical part of any database workshop.
>
> ===========
>
> A) Are there any FOSS SQL scripting tools that output data ready for reporting
> (like SQR, but better)?
>
> B) Are there any FOSS tools that will take data and build pretty output.
>
> C) Are there any FOSS tools of type B that will take streaming input from some
> tool of type A.
>
> D) Are there any FOSS tools that combine both A and B into one low learning
> curve package like Crystal Reports.

Not split up in that way, but Jasper Reports, OpenRPT and BIRT are
three reporting tools that have GUI designers available for them - I
believe all three are band-based engines. The learning curve isn't
entirely trivial, but it's certainly quite managable by end users.

(There are many, many others that don't have a GUI designer
available. There's at least one on pgfoundry that explicitly supports
postgresql. They usually seem to take XML as an input template and
render to HTML or PDF.)

Cheers,
Steve