Base graphics/visualization

users
#1

Oops! I goofed on the resend - sorry!

#2

Hi Dave,

So, I'm back to where we started. I have ver. 4.1.3.2, and I know
there is a new version in the works for later July. Will I be able to
use the report facility to build charts based on the data form the
query? If so, how?

Forget using Base/Calc to build complex charts from your data, unless
you have some serious time and coding skills to hand to be able to drive
all of this via scripts and one of LO's UNO interfaces (Python, Basic,
JS, Beanshell, etc).

Look for another reporting solution that integrates chart handling in a
(seemingly) more reliable way :

JReport (very similar to what appears to be available in Base, but
organised in a better way, IMHO :

http://www.jinfonet.com/manualpro/tutorial/index.htm

Pentaho Business Reports (this is the superset of tools to JFreeReport,
the reporting tool used by LO Base)

http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/Reporting/Pentaho+Reporting+-+User+Guide+for+Report+Designer

iReport / JasperReports
http://sourceforge.net/p/ireport/wiki/Home/

http://community.jaspersoft.com/wiki/ireport-designer-getting-started

The latter enables you to export your report to a multitude of formats,
including ODF, and PDF.

Alex

#3

Alex,

Thank you so much for the info! I have not spent much time on this, so
I'm guessing that the plan (for me) is to use LO Base, then use one of
these products to create the reports? These report generators require
either an ODBC or JDBC driver, so I'm hoping that Base has one or the
other. I did some Googling and it is not clear to me that it does. So,
does that mean that I should be focusing on PostgreSQL or MariaDB for
example?

Thanks,
Dave

#4

Hi David,

Thank you so much for the info! I have not spent much time on this, so
I'm guessing that the plan (for me) is to use LO Base, then use one of
these products to create the reports? These report generators require
either an ODBC or JDBC driver, so I'm hoping that Base has one or the
other. I did some Googling and it is not clear to me that it does. So,
does that mean that I should be focusing on PostgreSQL or MariaDB for
example?

LO Base uses an embedded hsqldb engine by default (and an old version at
that), you can not access it directly from other applications even over
a JDBC driver.

There are several alternative strategies :

- you use Excel sheets, CSV files ot delimited text files as your data
source - I believe, from preliminary reading, that at least some of the
report designers I indicated allow this possibility ;

- you use a separate, or external, hsqldb instance - there are tutorials
for this out there on the web (look in the OOo forum), but I think that
this is also given a mention in the LO Base handbook - as the standalone
hsqldb package comes with a JDBC driver you could then use that in one
of the report designer software programs I indicated ;

- you use a known RDBMS - postgres, mysql, mariadb, firebird as a
separate backend for your data, and then attach to that using the
relevant ODBC or JDBC connector via the report designer software.

If you want to do the whole "LO-integrated" thing and have complex
reports including multivariable graphs, etc, you will need to learn to
program LO via Basic or python, as I indicated in my first response.
That as such, would be no mean feat.

Alex