JReport Server provides a resource system for managing a group of archive versions that can be processed or organized.
Generally, a resource refers to report or dashboard related material. To be exact, a resource in the JReport Server reporting system is a conceptual node. There are different types of resources, such as catalogs, reports, dashboards, library components, and their results. A resource can only hold versions of the same type.
All the resources are organized in a folder-tree structure. JReport Server defines an XML file called admin.xml, and the resource tree conforms to this file. This file is maintained automatically by JReport Server.
For example, your company has two departments - Support and Marketing. Each department has its reports on their own machine. There are some report documents that are submitted by the departments located on the machine where JReport Server runs. Now, suppose you are the administrator, and you would like to organize these files and folders into the Resource Tree. The following diagram may help you to figure out the framework on which you should build the resource tree.
The resource tree consists of the following three layers:
There are two built-in folders in the resource tree root - Public Reports and My Reports for storing report resources. You can create your own folders in either of them. The Public Reports folder and the My Reports folder cannot be deleted.
The Public Reports folder contains public report documents and executable reports, and can be accessed by everyone. All folders except for the personal folders are public folders.
The My Reports folder is a personal folder. It contains personal report documents and executable reports. Each user has one personal folder, specified by the administrator when the user account is created. The My Reports folder can only be accessed by its owner, and the user has full control over his/her personal folder. This folder is the default output location for reports run by the user.
Reports
There are two types of reports in JReport: page reports and web reports. A page report is a collection of report tabs and each report tab can have multiple pages, while a web report has no report tabs and is always displayed as a web layout report with just one page.
JReport Server supports viewing, advanced running, scheduling and managing of reports. The background run/scheduled/active/completed record are based on report level.
When viewing a page report directly, if Page Report is set as the default report view format, the page report with all its report tabs will be run. Otherwise, only the default selected report tab will be run.
When using Advanced Run to run a page report, you can only select one report tab in the page report to run.
When using scheduling to publish a page report to the versioning system or to disk, the Page Report Result and JReport Result formats are based on the report level, that is, the report with all selected report tabs will be output to a single file. As for the other formats, each selected report tab will be output to a separate file but you still have the convenience of scheduling all the report tabs with a single schedule entry.
Public Components and My Components are two built-in folders in the resource tree root for storing library components. Their behaviors resemble the Public Reports and My Reports folders.
The Public Components folder contains public components and can be accessed by everyone. The My Components folder is a personal folder that contains personal components for each dashboard user.
Library components
Library components are used to build dashboards. They are able to present data via intuitive components such as charts, crosstabs, tables, and geographic maps. Library components are created and edited using JReport Designer, and then are published to the component library on JReport Server for use in dashboards.