Report generators: experience, recommendations?

I'm looking for a report generator which will be used to create
management reports for my client from a MySQL database. The web site
is implemented in PHP.

Some characteristics that would be nice to have, roughly in order of
importance:

* It is moderately priced (a few hundred dollars at most) or free.

* A developer can easily learn to create moderately complex reports.

* A developer can easily add code to provide functionality not
supported by the generator.

* The generator can be installed on a shared server (it doesn't
require any unusual extensions or changes to php.ino or the server
configuration.

* A non-technical user can easily learn to create simple reports
without help.

A client-server solution is OK. The client has to run on Windows.

I've found one PHP product so far, phpreports. There are many other
reporting tools that might be suitable, but most of them seem to be
written in Java, or else they're black boxes.

Has anyone had experience with report generators that meet these
criteria? What would you recommend; what would you stay away from?

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Re: Report generators: experience, recommendations?

On 2/13/2010 1:56 PM, Jonathan Sachs wrote:
> I'm looking for a report generator which will be used to create
> management reports for my client from a MySQL database. The web site
> is implemented in PHP.
>
> Some characteristics that would be nice to have, roughly in order of
> importance:
>
> * It is moderately priced (a few hundred dollars at most) or free.
>
> * A developer can easily learn to create moderately complex reports.
>
> * A developer can easily add code to provide functionality not
> supported by the generator.
>
> * The generator can be installed on a shared server (it doesn't
> require any unusual extensions or changes to php.ino or the server
> configuration.
>
> * A non-technical user can easily learn to create simple reports
> without help.
>
> A client-server solution is OK. The client has to run on Windows.
>
> I've found one PHP product so far, phpreports. There are many other
> reporting tools that might be suitable, but most of them seem to be
> written in Java, or else they're black boxes.
>
> Has anyone had experience with report generators that meet these
> criteria? What would you recommend; what would you stay away from?

Try Source Forge.....

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Re: Report generators: experience, recommendations?

On Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:01:35 -0500, news@ridersite.org (Al) wrote:

>> I'm looking for a report generator which will be used to create
>> management reports for my client from a MySQL database....
>>
>> Has anyone had experience with report generators that meet these
>> criteria? What would you recommend; what would you stay away from?
>
>Try Source Forge.....

Al: I appreciate your effort to be helpful, but if you review my
original post, you'll find that the question you answered is not the
one I asked.

I hope that others who have used one or more report generators will
share their thoughts.

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Re: Re: Report generators: experience, recommendations?

On Feb 14, 2010, at 11:51 PM, Jonathan Sachs <081012@jhsachs.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:01:35 -0500, news@ridersite.org (Al) wrote:
>
>>> I'm looking for a report generator which will be used to create
>>> management reports for my client from a MySQL database....
>>>
>>> Has anyone had experience with report generators that meet these
>>> criteria? What would you recommend; what would you stay away from?
>>
>> Try Source Forge.....
>
> Al: I appreciate your effort to be helpful, but if you review my
> original post, you'll find that the question you answered is not the
> one I asked.
>
> I hope that others who have used one or more report generators will
> share their thoughts.
>
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> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>

I like BIRT, and pentaho is nice to. In our office we rolled our own.
The chief issue with any report gen tool is that in most cases the
user needs to understand the basics of SQL in order to be able to
create meaningful reports. That is where most of our support time goes
for the tool. It's hard to train clients to do anything beyond simple
1 table reports.

Our tool uses mutli select boxes to choose tables and fields, which is
ok if you know SQL and what the fields do. BIRT uses a java interface
with drag and drop so from a user perspective it's somewhat easier to
do, but you need to have your db set up so that the tool can
understand the relationships between the tables.

I would suggest that you start with BIRT and then add a clause to the
support contracts that each report that you need to be involved in
will cost $50 or so to cover your time when the tool gets too
complicated for the users. Perhaps a series of common canned reports
could also be included to help make the sale.

Bastien

Sent from my iPod

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