Macros in Database Documents – Milestone 1

tags: database macros openoffice.org scripting

Moin GullFOSS reader,

Now it's time to test, the Reportdesigner is in a state where you could give it a try. You'll find the install sets here.

To make life easier, we created a issuezilla query where you see which tasks we still have to do (Thanks, Chris and Marc)

ReportDesigner issues for the cws oj14

Currently there exists no documentation, so you have to find the way by yourself. But that should always be possible, otherwise the GUI is wrong and we must fix it. :-)

Please feel free to submit any issue and send them to me. Use these rules which make our life easier as well.

• summary should start with 'RPT: '

• set keyword 'new_implementation' and 'oooqa'

• target milestone 'OOo later'

• prio 3 (default) for all new issues

That's it for today. Stay tuned for more information from the database team. dba.openoffice.org

tags: database qa report snapshot

Moin GullFOSS reader,

Since this is my first blog entry, I'd like to give you a short introduction to myself. My name is Ocke Janssen. I mainly develop in the database area for about 9 years now.. Taking a look at my e-mail address, you can easily see that I'm an employee of Sun Microsystems Inc..and co-lead of the OpenOffice.org Base project.

Back to our database application and your daily work with it; I'd like to invite you to file any bugs or topics you consider to be improved. Please send me an issue, I'll try to do my best to enhance your satisfaction with the product.

Another topic I'd like to talk to you about is that I'm working on a new project for some time, namely the ”Report Designer”. A long missing feature which was asked for by the OpenOffice.org community very often. We first had to find a good reporting engine to use, which we found in Pentaho's reporting engine, formerly known as JfreeReport.

So, what is it all about?

The new report designer will extend the database application. You then have the possibility to create reports not only with the famous wizard, but also manually.

As output format you have the choice between text documents or spreadsheets. (OASIS Open Document Format). The designer uses the classical way of presenting reports. To navigate through the components of your report, you'll have a navigator as you for sure already know from forms.

Each repeating section of the report has its own area where text can be inserted. In the first release you'll be able to create groups (with header and footer), functions, page header/footer, report header/footer. The best way to find all features is to try it when a stable version is available;-)

For the impatient ones of you, here are some first screen shots:

and a part of the resulting document when executing it.

The development is not yet finished but we will put a developer snapshot on the net as soon as possible.

In this context, I'd like to mention that my and other Sun engineer's work goes in the development of the designer - not the underlying engine. Many thanks to Thomas Morgner (“Thanks Thomas”) and the whole Pentaho team/community for providing us this fantastic reporting engine.

If you are Java programmer, you may want to dive into the sources of this engine. Makes fun, I did it my own :-)

Some (in the first step) supported features are:

• Report/Page/Group(nested) header/footer

• Formula

• Conditional printing/formatting

That's it for today. Stay tuned for more information from the database team. dba.openoffice.org

tags: database extensions odf pentaho report sql