ReportMill 8 review

ReportMill project is the most powerful Java reporting tool available. ReportMill is the best Java application reporting tool avai

License: Shareware File size: 0K Developer: ReportMill Software, Inc.

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ReportMill project is the most powerful Java reporting tool available.

ReportMill is the best Java application reporting tool available for dynamically generating reports and web pages from Java applications in formats such as PDF, HTML, Flash, Excel and more.

ReportMill combines an easy-to-use page layout application and a powerful Java API in a single compact jar file, which is remarkably easy to integrate into your custom Java application.

Here are some key features of "ReportMill":
Embedded Reporting
Powerful Design Application
Simple API
Simple Integration
PDF, HTML, Flash, Excel, Swing
XML based template design
Tables
Table Groups (sub-reports)
Graphing
CrossTabs
Labels

Embedded Reporting:

Running as Java code inside your application, ReportMill seamlessly harvests data directly from any Java dataset, whether EJBs, custom Java classes, Java Collection classes, JDBC ResultSets or any combination of these. This is much more efficient than traditional reporting tools, which often require developers to repackage existing Java datasets as the original SQL query, then force a redundant refetch and some potentially risky inter-process communication.

This architecture also provides unique access to custom business logic found in the developer's object model, providing a significant savings by reusing this code instead of forcing a rewrite in proprietary template macro languages.

Powerful Design Application:

ReportMill is the only reporting tool built on top of a comprehensive page layout application (see PageStudio.com). This ensures that almost any page or report design can be accommodated and also makes template design more intuitive for anyone who has made a newsletter or "For Sale" sign in any of the popular page layout applications.

Simple API

Most developers need to call only three lines of ReportMill API. Since ReportMill harvests data from any Java dataset using reflection and common collections interfaces, there is no need to write any binding/feeder code, implement any interfaces or create any datasource objects.

// Load template from any Source (File, String path, InputStream, byte array, etc.)
RMDocument template = new RMDocument(aSource);

// Generate report with EJBs, custom classes, Java Collections, JDBC ResultSet, etc.
RMDocument report = template.generateReport(myJavaDataset);

// Get PDF (or HTML, Flash, Excel, XML, etc.)
byte pdf[] = report.getBytesPDF();

Simple Integration

All of ReportMill is contained in a single, compact Jar file, ReportMill.jar. Simply merge this with your application or copy it to the class path of your deployment machine and any application can generate a report from any Java code with any Java dataset.

XML based template design

Template design in ReportMill is easy: simply draw the elements of your report using the powerful page layout application. Data binding is simple and powerful - just drag and drop an XML file into an empty ReportMill document to get a keys browser. Drag and drop the keys from the browser to design dynamic parts of your report. Key substitution uses the familiar mail-merge paradigm (eg, "@myKey@"), making it easy to mix keys and text. Drag and drop "List Keys" (keys that represent a set of objects) to form tables, graphs or data matrices.

PDF, HTML, Flash, Swing, Excel Output and More

ReportMill supports more output formats than most other reporting tools. Other output formats include CSV, JPG, PNG and XML.

Requirements:
Java 1.4.2 or later

What's New in This Release:
ReportMill 8 has been updated to Java 1.4 and has numerous enhancements which make it smaller, faster, easier to use and more feature rich. The ReportMill jar is now available in engine-only form, which is less than 900k, and the full version, complete with the design application, is only 1.6 MB. The new version also generates PDF up to 30% faster with up to 40% less memory.
ReportMill 8 also has a completely new 3D graphing engine, which supports graphing from any angle with interactive rotation, scaling and perspective. The table generation code has also been rewritten for this release and the new code is faster, more memory efficient and offers a new "Running Summary" feature which allows for "in-progress" summary rows and "Page summaries".
There are many other new features as well, including support of transparency in PDF generation and support for viewing multiple pages simultaneously in the same editor window.