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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.

Features

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

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

  • Paste needs to work properly. Undo, Redo, Copy, and Cut work just fine.
  • Allow arbitrary SQL.
  • Joins should support inner and outer joins.
  • Sub-reports.

Call For Volunteers

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If you would like to help by translating DataVision (the in-application strings, User's Manual, or the FAQ) to a new language, please let me know. Application string translations that have been completed or are in progress include

  1. bg_BG (Bulgarian, Bulgaria) by Tony Tomov
  2. de_DE (German, Germany) by Herbert Dietlmeier
  3. en_US (English, USA) by Jim Menard
  4. es_MX (Spanish, Mexico) by Miguel Angel Rojas Aquino
  5. fr_FR (French, France) by Daniel Essayag and Yaacov Akiba Slama
  6. it_IT (Italian, Italy) by Guido Amoruso
  7. pt_BR (Portuguese, Brazil) by Carlos Silva
  8. pt_PT (Portuguese, Portugal) by Sergio Ferreira
  9. ru_RU (Russian, Russia) by Igor Osminin
  10. sk_SK (Slovakian, Slovakia) by Matej "Mato" Holly
  11. tr_TR (Turkish, Turkey) by Ismail Cansiz

There is now a Chinese version of the FAQ, thanks to flybean.

The User's Manual and FAQ translations won't be shipped with DataVision; they would increase the size of the download for everyone too much. Instead, they will be hosted here and downloadable archives will be made available.

Documentation

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The documentation page contains links to the User's Manual, FAQ, and Javadocs. This includes the new Chinese version of the FAQ, thanks to flybean.

A mailing list named datavision-users@lists.sourceforge.net has been created for the discussion of tips, tricks, suggestions, bugs, and workarounds. For more information, see the documentation page.

Download

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Download the latest version () from SourceForge. The download contains the Java source code, a jar file (so you don't have to compile anything), scripts for running DataVision, and the documentation.

Changes

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Here is a summary of the major changes in version .

Changes

  • The layout engine command line options -c, -d, -f, -h, -l, and -x now take optional output file name arguments.
  • The Table Linker, Group By, and Sort By dialogs now only list columns in tables used by the report instead of listing every column in the database. This should make opening these dialogs much quicker with large databases.
  • Added an "OK" button to the SQL Query window to make it easier to close.

Bug Fixes

  • On Mac OS X with Java 1.4.1 the app hung after running a report from the command line. The app now exits properly.

Bugs

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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

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This list of countries includes those from which I have received emails and those subscribed to the DataVision Users mailing list.

  1. Australia
  2. Belgium
  3. Brazil
  4. Bulgaria
  5. Canada
  6. Colombia
  7. China
  8. Czech Republic
  9. Denmark
  10. France
  11. Germany
  12. Greece
  13. India
  14. Italy
  15. Malaysia
  16. Mexico
  17. Netherlands
  18. New Zealand
  19. Pakistan
  20. Paraguay
  21. Philippines
  22. Poland
  23. Portugal
  24. Romania
  25. Russia
  26. Singapore
  27. Slovak Republic
  28. South Africa
  29. Spain
  30. Sweden
  31. Taiwan
  32. Ukraine
  33. United Kingdom
  34. USA
  35. Yugoslavia

There is now a DataVision user's mailing list. For more information, visit the documentation page.

Copying and Warranty

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

Other Projects

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Projects Used by DataVision

MinML2 is the XML parser that DataVision uses.

The images (toolbar graphics) 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).

JRuby is a Ruby interpreter for Java.

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

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.

Other Reporting Tools

JasperReports is a powerful report-generating tool that has the ability to deliver rich content onto the screen, to the printer or into PDF, HTML, XLS, CSV and XML files.

JFreeReport is an open source report writer for Java with features like full on-screen print preview, XML-based report definitions and output to PDF.

JFreeChart is an open source Java class library for generating charts. JFreeChart is brought to you by the same people that created JFreeReport.

Agata Report is a Database Reporting Tool and EIS, MIS tool (graph generation), like Crystal Reports. Its written in PHP-GTK and allows you to edit and get SQL results from several databases as Text or PostScript Files.

Crystal Decisions, makers of Crystal Reports and other fine reporting and analysis tools.


Page last modified on . Site contents © 2001- by Jim Menard. All rights reserved.