[OT] Database reporting software

[David Segall]

Steve Horsley <shoot at the.moon> wrote:

>I have an existing system working on MS Access, and software that 
>regularly logs events into it (and deletes old events after a year).
>
>Now need to move to real servers, probably Solaris though possibly 
>Linux. Modifying the software to update the database (maybe mySQL or 
>Oracle) contents is easy enough, but how do I produce reports 
>(statistics and summaries) on the database contents?
>
>I could contemplate web based or application based report generation, 
>but are there easy to use draggy-droppy report designing applications 
>around? Just the names would enable me to look them up.
>
>I am struggling with OpenOffice.org at the moment, trying to see if it 
>can do what I'm looking for, but it doesn't seem to be able to do GROUP 
>BY and SUM() - simple aggregation stuff.
>
>All suggestions would be very welcome.
>
>Steve
If your new database has an ODBC driver the easiest solution would be
to keep your existing Access reporting by linking the tables to an
Access database running on a Windows machine. Oracle definitely
provides an ODBC driver as does the open source PostrgreSQL. I don't
know about mySQL.

If that is not desirable then Crystal Reports
(http://www.businessobjects.com/products/reporting/crystalreports/default.asp)
may be the answer. I hate coding reports using Crystal Reports but I'm
sure that you can, eventually, produce any conceivable report using
it. I don't think it is available under Linux or Solaris but it could
connect from a Windows machine to a database running on a Linux or
Solaris server.

If you want a machine and operating system independent report writer
the most polished open source, portable solution I have come across is
the combination of iReport (http://ireport.sourceforge.net/) and
JasperReports (http://sourceforge.net/projects/jasperreports/).