Summary - Has anyone attempted to generate the files within a Pentaho Report PRPT file using a different tool?
Reason for the insanity - We have a few hundred PDI jobs that generate Excel spreadsheets and email them to our users. Pentaho BI 5.0 (apparently) will allow some wonderful new functionality to PRD reports published to the PUC - specifically scheduled reporting of Excel spreadsheets distributed via email. However, while it is brilliantly easy to generate these Excel files in PDI, PRD fights you every step of the way and the more columns you need, the harder it gets. One of our "reports" includes 194 columns which is quite a few more than I want to drag and drop into the PRD. So I thought, why not use PDI to generate the files used by PRD?
(FYI - Pentaho Reports PRPT files are just a zipped up collection of xml and properties files.)
Extra details - Fully supported Enterprise Edition; linux, Oracle, fully confident in PDI skills, moderate PRD skills. I have utilized PDI to extract the field names and data types of an Oracle view - which is the likely starting point. I have already filed a support ticket for Pentaho Reporting seeking an efficient method for generating new Excel reports and there is not one available. While I am still exploring options to reduce the time it takes to develop PRD Excel spreadsheets, however for this post please focus on alternatives.
Current concept - Use PDI to distill the appropriate information from an input data source to create a fully compatible PRD report. Report would likely be further edited after generation.
Plea for help - Does anyone have experience, suggestions, recommendations, warnings, etc that would relate to generating the PRPT files compatible with PRD?
Reason for the insanity - We have a few hundred PDI jobs that generate Excel spreadsheets and email them to our users. Pentaho BI 5.0 (apparently) will allow some wonderful new functionality to PRD reports published to the PUC - specifically scheduled reporting of Excel spreadsheets distributed via email. However, while it is brilliantly easy to generate these Excel files in PDI, PRD fights you every step of the way and the more columns you need, the harder it gets. One of our "reports" includes 194 columns which is quite a few more than I want to drag and drop into the PRD. So I thought, why not use PDI to generate the files used by PRD?
(FYI - Pentaho Reports PRPT files are just a zipped up collection of xml and properties files.)
Extra details - Fully supported Enterprise Edition; linux, Oracle, fully confident in PDI skills, moderate PRD skills. I have utilized PDI to extract the field names and data types of an Oracle view - which is the likely starting point. I have already filed a support ticket for Pentaho Reporting seeking an efficient method for generating new Excel reports and there is not one available. While I am still exploring options to reduce the time it takes to develop PRD Excel spreadsheets, however for this post please focus on alternatives.
Current concept - Use PDI to distill the appropriate information from an input data source to create a fully compatible PRD report. Report would likely be further edited after generation.
Plea for help - Does anyone have experience, suggestions, recommendations, warnings, etc that would relate to generating the PRPT files compatible with PRD?