Santa dropped CDA datasources

The first few 4.0 features are in.



In the subversion repository, you can now find a CDA data-factory (along with a report-designer GUI plugin). This new data-factory allows you to use a server side CDA data-source in your report. You will need a very recent build of CDA to make it work (as CDA 1.0 had a bug in its XML exporter).



Grab the CDA sources from http://code.google.com/p/pentaho-cda/ and build it with "ant resolve dist" and you are ready to go.

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And secondly: Pentaho Reporting learned a couple of new barcodes. Our barcode element now uses Barcode4J in addition to Barbecue and thus adds support for the following barcodes:

• EAN-8
• EAN-128
• UPC-E
• Data-Matrix
• Royal Mail
• US-Postal Service Intelligent Mail

Merry Christmas!

Documentation Work in Progress

Over the last few weeks I lived with a split personality. OK, those who know me probably say: So what's new then?



The new thing is: There's documentation brewing. In a parallel effort of cooking the bug-fixes for the 3.7.1 release and writing documentation, I am preparing the scene for a better product now. The Pentaho Report Designer is nice, and quite a improvement to the previous releases, but at the moment it is only 'commercial grade' software en par with all other reporting offerings out there. For me, 'commercial grade' is never a badge of honour, as it usually means bug-fixes come late (if ever) and shiny check-box-list features get more energy than they deserve.



So let's turn the rudder, hang the petty officer and then raise the skull flag - we're going on a tour!



I already took the liberty to clean out the Wiki. Instead of presenting a S**t-load of obsolete documentation, I made the front page nearly empty. There is only one choice to make: Either go to the User Guide for Report Designer or try to dig your way through the random collection of the developer documentation.



Personally, for the next months to come, I will concentrate solely on the user guide. Developers? They have the source code. And if you are not willing to read the source code, then fork off $35 to get Will Gorman's book. And if you are not willing to spend that much, then try your luck with Crystal Reports. ;)



The installation documentation as well as the first walk-through is finished now. All other chapters will come over time - whenever my time permits to do a bit here. And once again: I will concentrate on the novice documentation before I dwell into the heavy stuff. If you're smart enough to get a decent report running, you are very likely to 'get' the complex stuff at some point. If not, well, there's always the forum, as before.





While writing the documentation, I do stumble across weird behaviour. Of course, where ever possible, I fix that rather than just document the weirdness. Our JIRA system now has a new 'component' called 'usability'. This is my personal bucket for all bugs for which I think that they make it hard to use the report designer, and which are easy to fix at the same time.

How can you help?

First - report bugs. Every bug. Have you ever double clicked on a list hoping to select a element in a dialog? File a Improvement request. Have you felt annoyed by dialogs being to small by default? Jira it! Do you feel unhappy that you have to click three times instead of clicking just once? Or is there a message that you find just confusing? Tell us about it.



Have you written How-Tos for your users? Tell us about it! If possible, add them to the wiki. And even if you cant add them (as you are not allowed to publish company property, for instance) - tell us about it. If you had to spend time explaining it, chances are high that we can improve either the workflow to make it easier to use or we can provide similar documentation, so that everyone can profit from it.

What is a report?

In its most basic form, a report is a document that contains information for the reader. When speaking of computer generated reports, these documents refine data from various sources into a human readable form. Report documents make it easy to distribute specific fact-based information throughout the company.

All reporting tools require well-defined data-sources to work with, so that the tools can formulate clear rules for querying, aggregation and data display. Computer generated Reports of all kinds consist mainly of tables and charts to convey their information to the recipients.

The term "report" or "reporting" is fairly imprecise these days and can mean several things. We differentiate two types of reports: "Analytical reports" and "Operational Reports".

Analytical Reports

Analytical reports usually used for strategical (long term) decision making. They are marked by a high variation of questions asked, where the exact same queries may be asked relatively rarely. To answer the question summary information is more important than a detailed view on the transactions that caused them. In many cases, a time based comparison or aggregation is involved as well. And last but not least, these tools are used for explorative querying where one questions leads to even more questions.

To be useful in a explorative analysis, these tools need to be highly interactive. The resulting reports are usually not stored for long term use - and therefore Analytical Reporting Tools provide a limited set of tools to design the visual appearance of the resulting report. It is more important to get the answers fast and then to allow the user to move to the next question than to spend time on making the results look beautiful.

A chain of questions answered by Analytical Reporting Tools could look like this:

"What are the five top growing products over the last year?
How was the growth distributed over our sales regions?
Why is the southern region not performing as well as the other regions?"

or

"Show me the weekly shipping costs for our carriers?
Why is that one so high?
What product caused most of the shipping costs on this particular carrier?
How does the same product perform with the other carriers?"

Once the question is answered, it is highly unlikely that the same chain of questions is frequently asked again by other users.

Operational Reports

In contrast, a operational report answers tactical questions regarding the day to day operation of the company. The reports generated are business transaction orientated and support day-to-day activities of the company. The decisions based on these reports are immediate decisions made at the line-manager level. They contain a high level of details required to answer the question or requirements.

Operational reports usually come in form of lists or tables.

Typical questions answered by Operational Reports are:

"Give me the new orders for today"
"Show me the status of our stores and how many articles are left in store."
"Print me a invoice for all customers served today"
"Print the daily accounts audit logs for our archives"

In Operational reports details are usually more important than the summary information. These reports answer questions that are asked frequently, so the same report can run a large number of times. For this reason, operational reports are "pre-canned" reports usually created by speciailzed report designers (power users or specialists). The design process for a good Operational report can easily take several hours to tweak the design of the resulting document to perfection.

The generated documents frequently get distributed to a larger audience in a process called "bursting". Bursting is a old term used to describe the process of cutting down the large printouts on endless paper to send off the sheets of paper to their respective recipients.

Operational reports regularly get sent out to customers and business associates. As with all printed material, companies put a high emphasis on the graphical appearance of the resulting document to convery the right public image. They can run off the operational systems and operational reporting engines were traditionally part of ERP systems and other business applications that require printing capabilities.

Pentaho Reporting was originally developed as a operational reporting tool. Its detailed layouting and formatting capabilities stem from this requirement. As part of the reporting process, Pentaho Reporting can access and incorporate data from analytical datasources. The main focus for the Pentaho Report Designer lies in the document generation, and thus Pentaho Reporting is not a suitable replacement for analytical query tools.

The flexibility of Pentaho Reporting allows you to create Guided AdHoc Reports to widen the scope of your pre-designed reports.

Surprise - its December and there is Snow

One thing that truly amazes me about the British (and heck, Ireland is largely British, but without needing a Queen) is their massive inability to cope with weather.

It is December now, and one could reasonably argue that there is a high chance of snow at this time of the year. Yet still, after one week of snowfall traffic on the roads is still crawling at the slowest speed possible. Streets are barely cleared and the country is in a cold icy shock. And every year busses, trains and car owners alike act surprised that this happens. Who could have known that there may be snow?

I came back today from a futile attempt to flee the country, as the Dublin Airport once more closed down due to the weather conditions. OK, flying with limited sight is not safe nor fun, so that one I accept. Outside the airport a warning sign informed the grounded travellers that "Taxi service is limited due to the weather conditions." Snow fall, not storm, not rain, just plain snow flakes coming down. But most people here have no winter tires. Last winter was so harsh that the water pipes in many Dublin areas burst due to the cold, leaving the citizen of Dublin with very limited water supply for the first few months of the year. Before that, the winter 2008/2009 was considered the coldest since 8 years. So there is plenty of proof that from time to time the mild Irish weather turn a bit harsher.

In the mean time, the whole of England is gripped in the same chaos.
Oh, and Germany is down in chaos as well.

Dang, when I was young (and mind you, that is not that long ago) snowy days like these did not cause that sort of chaos. But then there came the privatization of all public services. And for profit oriented corporations, high cost events like snow fall, gets ignored. With proper (and plenty) machinery such chaos could be easily reduced. But as long as the taxpayer pays for the chaos and those corporations are not held responsible for the delays and costs caused, they do not have any incentive to change their behaviour.

You would be surprised how quickly your train company installs proper procedures as soon as they have to pay for the lost earnings of all people that were affected by those delays. 'Cause at that point, public snow costs cut into their own profit.

Funnily the same people who say the state should retreat from providing such public services also say that the state should bear the costs for such chaos. The airlines tried to sing that "taxpayer gimme your money song" when last year's volcano chaos grounded their planes. They could have insured themselves against it, but chose not to so that they could make more profit. Wanna bet on whether the airlines try the same with the losses incurred by the snow?

Well, I will make my escape with the ferry tomorrow. Ships are safe. Whether the trains in Britain will then bring me to my target city is probably a different story...