Introduction

DataVision is an Open Source reporting tool similar to Crystal Reports. Reports can be designed using a drag-and-drop GUI. They may be run, viewed, and printed from the application or exported as HTML, XML, PDF, LaTeX2e, DocBook, or tab- or comma-delimited text files. The output files produced by LaTeX2e and DocBook can in turn be used to produce PDF, text, HTML, PostScript, and more.

DataVision is written in Java and runs almost anywhere. It can generate reports from databases or text data files. Any database with an available JDBC driver should work: Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Informix, hsqldb, Microsoft Access, Progress, and more. Columns read from text files can be separated by any character.

Report descriptions are stored as XML files. This means you can not only use the DataVision GUI but you may also edit reports using your favorite text editor.

DataVision is developed and maintained by Jim Menard (jimm@io.com). The latest version of DataVision can be found on the DataVision Web page. New releases are also announced on Freshmeat and on the DataVision mailing list.

News

2004-02-09 Frank W. Zammetti has published Reporting For The Web With DataVision, an article that shows you how to design a simple report and run it from within a Web application.

Features

Here is a list of DataVision's features, presented in a mind-jarring random order:

• Drag-and-drop report builder.
• Runs anywhere Java runs: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, Solaris, and more.
• Works with any database that has a JDBC driver: Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Informix, hsqldb, Microsoft Access, DB/2, and more.
• Report headers and footers, page headers and footers, group headers and footers.
• Report field formatting: color, numeric and date format, italic, bold, border lines, etc.
• Editable report-wide default field format.
• Subreports.
• Visual table linker.
• Aggregates (sum, min, max, count, average, stddev) by group and at report's end.
• Record sorting.
• Sub-selects allowed within SQL WHERE clauses.
• Formulas, using any language supported by the Bean Scripting Framework (BSF). The default formula language shipped with DataVision is Ruby (via JRuby).
• Record selection (SQL WHERE clause for database data sources, BSF script that accepts/rejects records for character-separated file data sources).
• Run-time parameters; asks the user for values when the report runs; if running from the command line, reads values in from an XML file.
• Run-time variables (again thanks to the BSF). A script run at the start of each report run is the perfect place to set all your initial values.
• User-defined SELECT clause columns; useful for calling stored procedures or SQL functions.
• Hide columns and entire sections.
• Reports can read data from different data sources. Currently, data sources are defined for databases and text data files (comma-separated, tab-separated, etc.)
• When reading text data files, translates date and numeric columns into the appropriate Java classes so they can be manipulated as such (formatted, used in formulas, etc.)
• Run and view reports on-screen.
• Print report from DataVision.
• Exports to HTML, XML, PDF, comma-separated, tab-separated, DocBook, LaTeX.
• GUI translated into eleven languages.
• Report definitions stored as human-readable XML.
• Open source, so you get all the code to play with and use.
• DataVision is embeddable within your own application.
• The download contains the Java source code, a jar file (so you don't have to compile anything), scripts for running DataVision, examples, and the documentation.

Here is a short list of things that are not implemented, but are necessary to make DataVision really useful:

• Paste needs to work properly in the report designer. Undo, Redo, Copy, and Cut work just fine.
• Joins should support inner and outer joins.
• Allow completely arbitrary user-edited SQL. This feature may never be added. See the answer to the FAQ question "Can I edit the SQL?"

Consulting

I can be bought. Already, I have added specific features such as subreports and applet support to DataVision because kind users have sponsored development.

Changes

Here is a summary of the major changes in version .

Changes

• DataVision now requires Java 1.4.X. (I don't know if it will work with Java 1.5.)
• New aggregate fields, replacing the single "subtotal" aggregate field. Field type values may be "sum", "min", "max", "count", "average", and "stddev". The old "subtotal" type will still be accepted and will be turned into "sum". The old "Running Total" dialog now lets you select the aggregate type at each level (group or report footer).
• The file parsing API has been simplified. Almost everywhere in the public interface, such as the report reading methods, that used to take a String file path, a Reader, an InputStreamReader, an InputSource, or anything else now just takes one of two types: a File or a InputSource.
• The old readFile() methods, that were deprecated, have been removed. Use the read() equivalents. See the previous item, though: read() only takes a File or an InputSource.
• The old Report.setParameterXMLFile method, that was deprecated, has been removed. Use setParameterXMLInput, which now only takes a File or an InputSource.
• Stopped using the MinML2 SAX parser, in favor of the built-in Java SAX parser.
• Removed the GNU regex library, since Java 1.4 includes regex support.
• Upgraded to iText PDF generation library version 1.3.
• Upgraded to JRuby 0.8.2.
• Added Rick Kramer's patch which adds a delete menu item to the field picker window's edit menu.
• Stop using "enum" as a variable name. It's a reserved word as of Java 1.5.
• The class ConnectionTest in examples/ConnectionTest.java is now in the package named "examples". The class TranslateOMatic in jimm/properties/TranslateOMatic.java is now in the package "jimm.properties".
• I've switched to using Subversion (SVN) instead of CVS for source code control. SourceForge will be offering SVN in the future. For now, I'm hosting the repository at http://jimm.textdriven.com/svn/datavision/trunk. I haven't bothered to try to import the existing CVS repository, since I don't think anybody really cares about the complete revision history of all the code since I've checked it in to CVS. To check out the source anonymously, assuming you have a SVN client, type

  svn co http://jimm.textdriven.com/svn/datavision/trunk datavision
  

  which will create a new directory called datavision. You can also point your browser at that URL and browse the latest revision online.
• Remember the last-used layout engine in the export window. This is the first of a hopefully long line of things that DataVision will remember for you. I plan to add more, like the windows positions, last-opened report, default formats, paper sizes, database connections, and more.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed creation of datavision-versiontar.gz. When unarchived, the files appear in a subdirectory named datavision-version instead of being unpacked in the current directory.
• Fixed a bug in the GUI: when a field format was changed, then the report was run, then another field's format was changed, the changed format was not used when you ran the report again. (The format was saved correctly when you saved the report.)
• Fixed bug where saving a report didn't save it to the right directory; it was saved in the datavision dir.
• Improved the PDF layout engine's font selection. It wasn't using the correct font name when it looked for the PDF equivalent standard font. The Java font family name is used to pick the PDF font. The family can be the font name ("Helvetica", "Arial") or a logical name ("sansserif", "serif", "monospace"). "Helvetica" or "sansserif" map to Helvetica, "Courier" or "monspace" map to Courier, "Symbol" and "ZapfDingbats" map to themselves, and everything else (including "serif", for example) maps to Times.

Bugs

The bug list is now being maintained on the SourceForge project Bugs page. When browsing the bugs, don't forget to search for bugs with a "Pending" status. Those bugs have been fixed in development and will be included in the next release (the fixes, not the bugs).

Documentation errata may be found on the Documentation page.

User Community

This list of countries includes those from which I have received emails and those subscribed to the DataVision Users mailing list. It exists solely because I have an ego, and that ego likes to see how widely DataVision is used.

1. Afghanistan
2. Australia
3. Austria
4. Belgium
5. Brazil
6. Bulgaria
7. Canada
8. Colombia
9. China
10. Czech Republic
11. Denmark
12. Dominican Republic
13. Egypt
14. France
15. Germany
16. Greece
17. India
18. Ireland
19. Italy
20. Latvia
21. Malaysia
22. Mexico
23. Netherlands
24. New Zealand
25. Pakistan
26. Panama
27. Paraguay
28. Philippines
29. Poland
30. Portugal
31. Romania
32. Russia
33. Singapore
34. Slovak Republic
35. South Africa
36. Spain
37. Sri Lanka
38. Sweden
39. Switzerland
40. Taiwan
41. Uganda
42. Ukraine
43. United Arab Emirates
44. United Kingdom
45. Uruguay
46. USA
47. Yugoslavia
48. Vietnam
49. Zimbabwe

Copying and Warranty

The notices that were displayed here have moved to the Copying and Warranty section of the User's Manual.

Other Projects

Projects Used by DataVision

The images (toolbar icons) are courtesy of Sun Microsystems. They can be found at the Java Look and Feel Graphics Repository. On that page is a link to the file jlfgr-1_0.jar which contains the images.

JCalendar is the calendar widget by Kai Toedter (kai@toedter.com).

The Bean Scripting Framework (BSF) is an Apache Jakarta project is a Java framework for executing scripting languages that can access Java objects.

JRuby is a Ruby interpreter for Java that also implements the BSF interface.

iText is the free Java-PDF library by Bruno Lowagie used in the PDF layout engine.

Thanks to FindBugs for helping me find some potential bugs in the code.

MinML2 is the XML parser that DataVision used to use. It has been superceded by the built-in Java 1.4 SAX parser.

Contributions

Pascal Pochet of P3 Consulting has written a Mac OS X wrapper for DataVision (here's a mirror). It's freeware, and includes source code.

Projects Using DataVision

Evaristo is an open source ERP solution. Evaristo includes an embedded version of DataVision.

The Open For Business Project is an open source enterprise automation software project licensed under the MIT Open Source License. The goal of the project is to build a community of end users and developers that work together directly to create easy to customize business software based on best practices. Open For Business uses DataVision.

Cotsec plans to use DataVision as its preferred/default reporting Enterprise Component for their Enterprise Components suite.

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