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

> (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.)

Our reports tool does this as well and works with most major databases.

From the URL at http://www.gnuenterprise.org/tools/reports/

"GNUe Reports is a platform and output-independent reporting system. It reads
an XML-based report definition and generates arbitrary XML output that can
further be translated into any format for which there is an adapter. GNUe
Reports currently has outputs for Text, HTML, Label Stock, and CSV -- with
PDF, Postscript, and Gnumeric/Excel formats in the works. Reports can output
directly to a file, as an email attachment, to a printer, or to a HylaFax
server. "

I've used gnue-reports to merge data from a postgresql db, merge it with an
RTF (or postscript) based template, and send the output to hylafax using the
fax number associated with the record.

It does have some support in our GUI designer tool but I've not tried it
recently. Most my reporting needs are handled just as easily by a small app
written using our pdf table generator in our common library. psql enhanced
with the sql*plus output control would eliminate a lot of the need for even
that at my current employer.

Since we started talking about sql*plus features another handy tool from
Oracle was SQL*Forms. That is one item I do have a replacement for :) Our
GNUe-Forms package was originally inspired by Oracle's old SQL*Forms package.
It also supports most major DBs and has addressed several shortcomings we
felt SQL*Forms had.