Benefits
Features
Large, complex, media rich reports – instant output
Benefit from an end-to-end streaming engine capable of ‘instantly’ producing low-latency business reports thousands of pages long that consume minimal server resources.
Enterprise reports
Create rich layouts using enterprise features; page & group headers, smart page-breaks, running totals, charts, images, fonts, bar-codes, vector graphics, and tables. These features are needed for producing mission critical reports in use cases such as utility billing.
High-speed, streamed output
A constant memory, linear-time, RTL streaming transformation language minimizes compute resources such as memory, CPU and network bandwidth. No need for voluminous temporary files. Reports are processed without latency using a sliding window of limited memory size. Data produced by the application is processed progressively by all involved components right to the browser or printer.
Instant output
No matter how long your document is, report output will appear in a matter of seconds.
High-volume
Supports documents that are thousands of pages long. Suitable for huge batch runs that must complete within a fixed timeframe.
API driven reports
Embed your reports seamlessly into your code using one of the four supported language APIs: Java, C# and PHP.
Complex data structures
Able to process deeply nested structured documents in an intuitive fashion without the need for XPATH expressions or similar. This dramatically improves throughput for complex high volume print runs by reducing network roundtrips on elements such as sub-reports.
Multiple output options
Print soft copy reports to Web browsers, MS Word®, MS Excel®, Acrobat®, SVG® as well as any printer. Browsers render SVG or HTML5 data streams with low latency to target clients (Windows, Mac, Linux). Formats such as Acrobat, MS Office or Open Office by their nature are not streamed.
Multiple data sources
Select data from any source the programming language can access. Input from databases, pipes, sockets, files, messaging or web services.
Delegate report design
Save valuable developer time by delegating report creation and edits to your customers. The data stream follows a strict schema whose structure is specific to the document thereby ridding the report designer of having to know how the data is retrieved and ‘cooked’. Data production and presentation layers are separate, so no amount of tweaking can interfere with the data structure or application. Data streams can be rendered in many ways: from simple lists to complex reports using charts, group headers… just by selecting another template design. Empower your customers and leave your developers to what they do best.
Intuitive Report Designer
The report designer uniquely combines the simple WYSIWYG principles known to ad-hoc reporting tools with the sophistication of complex document reporting. This allows end users to intuitively master the skills needed to modify existing reports, while at the same time giving developers a free-hand to implement more complicated layout rules.
Ready-to-use templates
Benefit from a powerful set of templates that will get you started in no time. Select sophisticated reports by walking through the template wizard and create your own designs from existing samples. Create templates quickly by simply converting your design. Boost productivity by working with document types rather than with individual documents.
Eliminate management pain
Most enterprises have report libraries that span thousands and thousands of files. The majority of these files are largely redundant; they are iterations or translations of the same report. Reduce the number of reports you need to manage dramatically by consolidating multiple reports into a single design.
Easy to internationalize
Use a single design for all language translations rather than multiple copies of the same design. The advanced layout engine will adapt the report according to set rules you have defined producing a perfect looking document each time, irrespective of text length and writing direction in the case of oriental languages.
Easy to maintain
Template, dynamic layout and translation tools all drastically reduce the number of needed reports. These tools faciliate the management of your report library by reducing its size. Readable XML as document sources, close design-time validation error checking for instant ‘change impact’ discovery. Command line tools are available for batch validation and report updates.
One report fits all
Dynamic layouting enables a single report to adapt to different environments: font changes, field values, international languages, paper sizes and orientation, while ensuring a perfect document every time.
Reports that don’t break
Discover data incompatibilties between data sources and report designs immediately at report creation time thanks to strong data typing. Avoid costly runtime errors that take time to debug and frustrate users in the field.
Template driven
Create reports quickly using the template Wizard that takes advantage of exsiting report designs rather than starting each one from scratch. Unroll and run templates at runtime, using user selected field lists.
Deployment flexibility & scalability
N-tier architecture
Able to scale across multiple geographically dispersed servers. The engine is context free, thereby allowing for round-robin load balancing. Applications generate data streams based on report designs that they serve to the Report Engine that in turn formats and paginates. This data stream in turn gets served to the output medium and rendered to the appropriate hardware or software device.
Silent printing
Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) platform independent programmatic device control is supported for silent printing.
Push architecture
Reports are pushed to the output device rather than pulled per traditional methods used in most common tools today. This in conjunction with the ability to ship deeply structured data vastly simplifies the developer’s life, removing fragility and unnecessary roundtrips.