[Riyad Kalla]

For folks that missed the MyEclipse Reports Webinar, you can grab the slides from the presentation as well as a recording of it from here. Additionally all the great Questions and Answers we got during the QA session after are answered below for your reference.

We appreciate everyone’s contribution and interest in the webinar, we hope you found it useful!

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Q: Can you crate a report with grouping?
A: Yes. One of the properties of a Table is it’s “Groups”. You can add any number of Grouping criteria to a table.

Q: Will it work on Tomcat 4.x?
A: Most likely not, because reports require a J2EE 1.3, 1.4 or Java EE 5 web project and Tomcat 4 didn’t support the web spec from J2EE 1.3.

Q: Will MyEclipse Reports run on Tomcat 5.5 or Tomcat 6.0?
A: Absolutely. The MyEclipse Tomcat Server that comes embedded with MyEclipse and was what was shown in the Webinar is actually Tomcat 6.

Q: Can a column have anchors for clicking to a detail (through a JSP or a servlet)?
A: Yes. You can insert Text that is actually HTML links over to another resource such as a page or servlet.

Q: Have you automatic rollover shading ot rows?
A: Yes. You can setup specific “Highlight” rules for the table and all of it’s contents. They can be very specific (if value is > 100, highlight red) or general (highlight every other row).

Q: What version of Myeclipse do you have to use to get reporting features?
A: MyEclipse Reports is a new feature that was added to MyEclipse 6.0.2 Professional. So you will need to be using MyEclipse 6.0.2 or later to use it.

Q: How do you do subtotals? Then a final total?
A: You can use the Aggregation tool from the palette to create totals, sub totals, averages, summations, etc.

Q: Can you import existing reports from other apps such as JasperReports or Crystal Reports?
A: No, not yet. We are looking at some migration tools for a future release.

Q: Are there any built in security features such as enabling a username/password to view a report(s)?
A: Since the report can be displayed as a simple JSP page, you can either handle the security yourself by placing it behind a protected login, or integration a login/password parameters into the report directly if you prefer.

Q: Can you pass a parameter to the report, for example, some user input like a Product ID?
A: Yes. You actually specify “parameters” for the report, where they are used, and where their values come from (like user inputted values, values from another data set, etc.).

Q: Can you define a text field bound to a piece of data?
A: Absolutely. You can bind the value of any component on the Report designer to a value from a dataset.

Q: Since the report is just a normal JSP page, can I add some logic or customize it?
A: Definately. MyEclipse Reports will generate some basic access code for you to load your report, but you are free to copy and paste that code into another page possibly inside of a template or wrap the page with your own styling, logic or code if you want.

Q: How does MyEclipse “Run As MyEclipse Server Application” recognize a Websphere Server for purposes of testing the Report?
A: It doesn’t need to. This functionality along with “Debug As” simply deploys the Web Application that houses the report to your application server of choice. Because the reports are a standard Web Application, there is no need for the app server to know if it’s a “Report” app or not; it simply runs it.

Q: What is the underlying reporting engine that you’re using?
A: MyEclipse Reports is based on the BIRT Reporting framework.

Q: Can you convert the HTML Report to other formats for display, print or archiving?
A: Yes. When viewing the report, the Viewer provides “Export” options to other major formats like a PDF, Word Doc, Powerpoint, etc.

Q: Is there a data limit to a report?
A: Only that imposed by the memory and processor limitations of the machine running the report.

Q: What libraries do I need to deploy or install for my Reports project to run on my app server?
A: None. All necessary reporting engine libraries and report viewer libraries are directly integrated into your project when you either create a Report Project or add Reporting Capabilities to an existing Web Project. Then when you deploy that project from MyEclipse all the libraries are packaged and deployed for you, you don’t need to do any further work.

Q: Can you prevent a user from exporting the raw data from the report viewer?
A: Yes, the only data available for export from the Report is the data physically shown in the report. Users don’t have access to do a raw data dump of the data sets used in the report.

Q: Can I use a JNDI data source for my data in a Report?
A: No, not at this time. That is a server-provided resources that MyEclipse would not have access to during design time. So for a DB data source, MyEclipse Reports supports any JDBC data source (in addition to the other non-DB data sources like Web Services, XML files, etc.)

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