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Are Open Source Reporting Tools Ready for Primetime?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the information-in-black-white-and-red dept.

Z0mb1eman asks: "My company is considering replacing our aging CrystalReports with an open source solution. We are currently doing our research, and the choices seem promising -- JasperReports, Actuate-backed BIRT, and Pentaho, which seems to combine other open-source reporting tools. All have some level of commercial support, but are they ready to replace established solutions like Crystal Reports or even Actuate? Is your company using an Open Source reporting tool, and what have been your experiences with such tools? Are there any other choices we should consider? What should we expect if we make the decision to switch?"

4 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Why are you switching? by Timothy+Chu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You haven't talked about why you'd want to switch. If something works, why change it?

  2. Depends what you need! by mikeburke · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you identified what your requirements are from a reporting tool, be it open source or commercial? Your definition of 'prime time' is totally dependent on this

    - who will be writing the reports (techies, business folks, both)?
    - what layout and formatting capabilities are absolutely needed?
    - any really big reports? performance may be an issue
    - what are the security needs - authentication, visibility, auditing, etc?
    - do you need overnight automated report runs?
    - what about bursting (automatically splitting a report into sub-reports based on department, product type, whatever)?
    - do you need to integrate with custom developed software? what language+platform, etc?

    The first point is particularly important - if business staff want to dolly up simple adhoc reports, then this will seriously narrow down the open source field pretty quickly.

  3. Re:This seems like the first comment by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I use open source because it's lowercase free. I keep telling myself I'll contribute someday but it has been almost a decade and I haven't hardly even submitted any bug reports. I think a lot of people talk the talk, but few walk the walk. I'm sure someone will reply saying it's not the case but it is the case with everyone I know who uses open source. The only bug reports I know that anyone (I personally know) sends in is to bioconductor because something produces bad data. They don't care how hard it is to use, how shitty the interfaces can be, they just want the data to be correct. They'll find a work around on their own and if they can't, maybe they'll submit a bug report themselves. They will be using perl, mysql, R, etc because it's lowercase free. The don't care about the politics and just don't have the time or inclination to contribute.

  4. Serious lack of requirements... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ultimately, the suitability of the software depends on your requirements, doesn't it? Do you require source? Do you require a lower cost solution? Do you require support? These are common reasons to evaluate open software replacements for commercial offerings. Chances are you won't find an open source solution that will match the features, functions and support of the commercial offerings available. This, I suspect, will change in time with projects like BIRT http://www.actuate.com/birt and companies like MARVELit http://www.marvelit.com/ and Pentaho http://www.pentaho.com/ adding functions, features and support.
    Highlight your reporting requirements and I suspect the /.ers can give you a better answer than calling Cognos. :)