Hi folks!
Packt Ed. has given me a copy of their new Pentaho book (they're on a Pentaho publishing binge!) "Pentaho Reporting 5.0 by Example" (http://www.packtpub.com/pentaho-5-0-...ers-guide/book) for reviewing.
The book carries the "Beginner's guide" subtitle although it goes further than mere beginning: it is as complete as it needs to be to allow the reader to really learn how to use PRD (covering the instalation and configuration of both the environment and the PRD and BA Server.)
Regarding report creation itself, the book covers probably everything that is there to be used: from interface controls to data sources, database connections, properties, functions, sub-reports, charts, links, prompts, and even how to customize the results with CSS and embed it in another application through API. All of this is done with lots and lots of screenshots and comments, on the traditional Packt formula (sections like What Happened, Have a Go Hero etc.)
I haven't gone through all the examples, but everything seems in order and I could not find any mistake either on the examples or the writing (which is a bit odd indeed, expectedly so as it is written by non-English native speakers.)
A must have if you want to learn how to use PRD in its breadt (and quite a reasonable dept.) There is room for an "Advanced Guide", however, in which to address the low-level nuts and bolts of it, like all its flags and Java details (I haven't read but the Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers book might have already addressed some of it) and show some magic stuff like having buttons on the report and invisible commands on the report (as the button to send the resulting report by e-mail from inside BA Server shown in the Pentaho Architect Bootcamp training - hello, Brian! ;-) )
Best regards,
Fábio de Sales
http://geekbi.wordpress.com
Packt Ed. has given me a copy of their new Pentaho book (they're on a Pentaho publishing binge!) "Pentaho Reporting 5.0 by Example" (http://www.packtpub.com/pentaho-5-0-...ers-guide/book) for reviewing.
The book carries the "Beginner's guide" subtitle although it goes further than mere beginning: it is as complete as it needs to be to allow the reader to really learn how to use PRD (covering the instalation and configuration of both the environment and the PRD and BA Server.)
Regarding report creation itself, the book covers probably everything that is there to be used: from interface controls to data sources, database connections, properties, functions, sub-reports, charts, links, prompts, and even how to customize the results with CSS and embed it in another application through API. All of this is done with lots and lots of screenshots and comments, on the traditional Packt formula (sections like What Happened, Have a Go Hero etc.)
I haven't gone through all the examples, but everything seems in order and I could not find any mistake either on the examples or the writing (which is a bit odd indeed, expectedly so as it is written by non-English native speakers.)
A must have if you want to learn how to use PRD in its breadt (and quite a reasonable dept.) There is room for an "Advanced Guide", however, in which to address the low-level nuts and bolts of it, like all its flags and Java details (I haven't read but the Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers book might have already addressed some of it) and show some magic stuff like having buttons on the report and invisible commands on the report (as the button to send the resulting report by e-mail from inside BA Server shown in the Pentaho Architect Bootcamp training - hello, Brian! ;-) )
Best regards,
Fábio de Sales
http://geekbi.wordpress.com