Next assignment - Reports

[Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'd like to thank folks on this list for their feedback on recent 
assignments which have included a popup calendar, javascript 
compression, a utility for maintaining user defined fields, and a 
utility for uploading and attaching files to records in our database.

My next assignment is to come up with a solution for reports.  The scope 
includes generating, cataloging, and working with reports.  I have the 
leeway to develop something myself, but I'm not particularly inclined to 
reinvent the wheel.  Vendor solutions can be considered.  The project is 
NOT well defined, but I understand that reporting is a broadly scoped 
topic.

The report library (or catalog) needs a browser-based UI and needs to be 
more robust and extensible than the WRKOUTQ command.  Report formats 
need to include HTML and PDF as well as ASCII text.

One of my colleagues used Jasper Reports to generate High-school Student 
Transcripts and the PDF output looked great, but runtime performance was 
poor.

For generating reports, I've considered writing an API for RPG 
programmers to output HTML or PDF files, and cross-reference generated 
stream files with entries in the catalog.  This is appealing to me as an 
RPG programmer and addresses a couple concerns.  First, many of our 
reports are produced as part of a larger process.  Posting fees to 
accounts generates a transaction listing, for example.  Second, the API 
that generates the report could also generate index entries in the 
catalog.  For example, if a program generated a 60,000 page report of 
student transcripts, it would be helpful if the viewer in the report 
catalog could filter the page listing to include only those pages for a 
particular student.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Nathan.