Pentaho Reporting is a suite (collection of tools) for creating relational and analytical reports. It can be used to transform data into meaningful information. Pentaho allows generating reports in HTML, Excel, PDF, Text, CSV, and xml. This tutorial provides a basic understanding of how to generate professional reports using Pentaho Report Designer.
What is Pentaho Reporting?
Pentaho Reporting is a suite (collection of tools) for creating relational and analytical reporting. Using Pentaho, we can transform complex data into meaningful reports and draw information out of them. Pentaho supports creating reports in various formats such as HTML, Excel, PDF, Text, CSV, and xml.
Pentaho can accept data from different data sources including SQL databases, OLAP data sources, and even the Pentaho Data Integration ETL tool.
Features of Pentaho
Pentaho Reporting primarily includes a Reporting Engine, a Report Designer, a Business Intelligence (BI) Server. It comes loaded with the following features −
- Report Designer − Used for creating pixel perfect report.
- Metadata Editor − Allows to add user-friendly metadata domain to a data source.
- Report Designer and Design Studio − Used for fine-tuning of reports and ad-hoc reporting.
- Pentaho user console web interface − Used for easily managing reports and analyzing views.
- Ad-Hoc reporting interface − Offers a step-by-step wizard for designing simple reports. Output formats include PDF, RTF, HTML, and XLS.
- A complex scheduling sub-system − Allows users to execute reports at given intervals.
- Mailing − Users can email a published report to other users.
- Connectivity − Connectivity between the reporting tools and the BI server, which allows to publish the content directly to the BI server.