Hi everybody, I've been thinking of coding a reports engine for a few days, but i'm sure i'm not the only one to have ideas about that, so i'd like to know what you think about it, and if something has already been done. i see it as a user-friendly interface, which would be used to edit the configuration files of the rssKoha package. I think using rssKoha is a good point because it let us format the reports the way we want, using a XSLT stylesheet. So, if you"re interested or if you have already work on something like that, i'd be glad to hear from you. /pierre
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Pierre Cauchois <cauchoip@esiee.fr> wrote:
I've been thinking of coding a reports engine for a few days, but i'm sure i'm not the only one to have ideas about that, so i'd like to know what you think about it, and if something has already been done.
Do you mean a "reports engine" similar to the Crystal Reports or ReportSmith products for Windows? If so I'm willing to help. I'd be very interested to help if this report engine were also usable outside of Koha. Regards, Trevor <>< Re: deemed!
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:22:54 +0000 (GMT) "Trevor Jenkins" <trevor.jenkins@suneidesis.com> wrote:
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Pierre Cauchois <cauchoip@esiee.fr> wrote:
I've been thinking of coding a reports engine for a few days, but i'm sure i'm not the only one to have ideas about that, so i'd like to know what you think about it, and if something has already been done.
Do you mean a "reports engine" similar to the Crystal Reports or ReportSmith products for Windows? If so I'm willing to help. I'd be very interested to help if this report engine were also usable outside of Koha.
well, i don't know these softwares but from what i found on the web, the idea would be the same, except that it would be free software :). my idea is to build a web interface (a form) interpreted by a perl script to build a query, and then output it in a rss config file. The output of this query would be formatted in rss (that's a XML defined format). Parsing the XML file is not the goal of the engine, though we could provide some kind of stylesheet. comments and critics? /pierre
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Pierre Cauchois <cauchoip@esiee.fr> wrote:
I've been thinking of coding a reports engine for a few days, but i'm sure i'm not the only one to have ideas about that, so i'd like to know what you think about it, and if something has already been done.
Steve had made a start on a reports thing for Koha, I'm sorry I can't recall the URL, but you might want to see if he replies - otherwise is an excellent idea. Cheers Rachel
Pierre Cauchois wrote:
Hi everybody,
I've been thinking of coding a reports engine for a few days, but i'm sure i'm not the only one to have ideas about that, so i'd like to know what you think about it, and if something has already been done.
i see it as a user-friendly interface, which would be used to edit the configuration files of the rssKoha package. I think using rssKoha is a good point because it let us format the reports the way we want, using a XSLT stylesheet.
So, if you"re interested or if you have already work on something like that, i'd be glad to hear from you.
/pierre
I think that what Koha needs is : * a user friendly tool to create requests. * a user friendly tool to create "templates" reports. * something to merge requests & "templates" reports to create nice reports. * the reports should be outputed : - on screen (html) - in PDF for nice printing - in StyleSheet form. There are already some tools to do this or parts of this. We already named some : GDA (the GNOME DB interface) JasperReports (http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/) => in Java Agata Report (http://agata.codigolivre.org.br/) => in PHP DataVision (http://datavision.sourceforge.net/) => in Java also look at : morinn.free.fr/koha/canned_reports.htm -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)
Hi ppl, Thanks for your answers. I've looked to everything you suggested, but many of the solutions were in Java, Pascal, or even worse, proprietary software. It can be a good example for a front-end, but i think that it's for the best if the engine is directly integrated in Koha, and therefore to use a backend in Perl, and a frontend with templates, with export possibilities (rss, csv, etc). I've begun working on a couple of script that would work with the frontend of Nicolas Morin: http://morinn.free.fr/koha/canned_reports.htm because this interface can easily be used by a librarian with no IT skills, but is flexible enough to extract almost any interesting piece of information from the database. Any crits or ideas would be welcome, btw, from next week on, i'll be in vacation, far from any kind of network, and i'll be back by the end of August, so feel free to work on the reports engine even if i can't answer or give my opinion during this time :) /pierre
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Pierre Cauchois <cauchoip@esiee.fr> wrote:
Thanks for your answers. I've looked to everything you suggested, but many of the solutions were in Java, Pascal, or even worse, proprietary software.
The use of Java isn't so bad. But I was concerned to see the Kylix/Delphi/Pascal suggestion.
... It can be a good example for a front-end, but i think that it's for the best if the engine is directly integrated in Koha,
There are several open source report writers. Incoprorating theminto Koha might prove to be a better solution. Here's some URLs form my bookmarks. http://datavision.sourceforge.net/ Uses Ruby http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/timc/gurgle/ Uses C/C++ http://agata.codigolivre.org.br/ Uses PHP/Tk
therefore to use a backend in Perl, and a frontend with templates, with export possibilities (rss, csv, etc).
A search of cpan.org found me several Perl-specific report writer modules that already have hooks into Perl DBI. Using one of those would surely be better than starting from scratch. Then effort could be put into providing a sensible web interface. Regards, Trevor <>< Re: deemed!
Trevor Jenkins <trevor.jenkins@suneidesis.com> wrote:
The use of Java isn't so bad. [...]
Use of Java is troublesome, as I think few Koha systems have JREs installed and even then, there is the question of what to target, as I suspect not many of them will work nicely with GNU Classpath yet. I think Kylix is as bad, as you need proprietary runtime libs. Care to give a list of the CPAN ones, so someone can start reviewing? Then again, this is 2.1 talk and 2.0 isn't out yet. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ jabber://slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ Thought: Edwin A Abbott wrote about trouble with Windows in 1884
MJ Ray wrote:
Care to give a list of the CPAN ones, so someone can start reviewing? Then again, this is 2.1 talk and 2.0 isn't out yet.
Please, give us a list, I agree with MJ Ray. I tried to search on cpan, and asked a french newsgroup, but had no success... -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)
On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, paul POULAIN <paul.poulain@free.fr> wrote:
MJ Ray wrote:
Care to give a list of the CPAN ones, so someone can start reviewing? Then again, this is 2.1 talk and 2.0 isn't out yet.
Please, give us a list, I agree with MJ Ray. I tried to search on cpan, and asked a french newsgroup, but had no success...
Here's a couple that I found on search.cpan.org using a search of "report writing" Data-Reporter-1.4 > Data::Reporter http://search.cpan.org/author/RVAZ/Data-Reporter-1.4/Reporter.pm DBIx-Formatter-0.01 > Formatter http://search.cpan.org/author/FABRVEC/DBIx-Formatter-0.01/Formatter.pm Text-TemplateFill-1.7 > Text::TemplateFill http://search.cpan.org/author/ADDW/Text-TemplateFill-1.7/TemplateFill.pm There are hundreds of hits for my search :-) but not allthem are report writers :-( I've not used any of the above; merely searched CPAN for them. The first two appear from their documentaion to be fairly general in their report writing features. But YMMV. Regards, Trevor <>< Re: deemed!
participants (5)
-
MJ Ray -
paul POULAIN -
Pierre Cauchois -
rachel＠katipo.co.nz -
Trevor Jenkins