Reports, probably again

[Gregory]

"..is it possible to connect a decent sql report generator to the 
backend and produce acceptable business reports?  If so, and you could 
provide a few tips for newbies to get us up and running, it would be 
very much appreciated."


I have a setup where I use JasperReports to output PDF/HTML reports from 
a gnucash mySQL backend db (linux).

It was not a small undertaking to get there. If the reports are to be 
written in pure sql, the accounts table has to be slightly modified 
using a pre-ordered tree traversal algorythm.

Once you do this it's easier to write a few stored procedures (and 
supporting functions for those sp's) that output a table of data to be 
used by Jasper Reports.

I run a small java jar app that outputs a single PDF/HTML whatever I 
want of all my reports. JS does output nice looking reports.

A down side to my method is the accounts table has to be refreshed if i 
ever make changes to it through the application.

Then of course you have to create the jrxml Jasper templates using iReport.

So not for the faint of heart maybe, but possible

-Greg








On 08/07/2011 10:37 AM, James Wilde wrote:
> It has to be said: gnucash is a great product for inputting data, but the native reporting system sucks.  Html is _not_ the correct format for printed reports and the default font, Arial or Lucida, or whatever it is, is also wrong for business reports.  Additionally I have changed the default font to Courier in Settings, but I can't see that it has affected my reports in any way.
>
> Cutting and pasting into LibreOffice calc and reformatting there is also a messy business, and printing to a html file and opening that in calc is no better.  Unfortunately I don't have the programming know-how or I would set about creating a proper gui-based reporting system for Gnucash.  And why are so many fields clickable links?  None of them appear to lead anywhere.  Well, they do when the report is open in Gnucash, of course, but the link nature is carried over to the report document, and there it has absolutely no value except to print account names and transaction values in blue, underlined and clickable.
>
> Is anyone using the option in later versions to use a sql backend?  In that case, is it possible to connect a decent sql report generator to the backend and produce acceptable business reports?  If so, and you could provide a few tips for newbies to get us up and running, it would be very much appreciated.
>
> TIA
>
> James
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