Hi Dave. Yes, Studio is what you're interested in. When we get our OEMed bundled software we'll be getting the 'Pro' packages, but if you're interested in getting your head around the report designer I suspect the community edition is good enough. At CAW I *believe* the demo systems were running Jasper 5.5 (don't recall - 5.5.2 was the release at the time. If it was other than 5.5 this would have stood out to me). Jasper 6 is the current release and adds enhancements to Jasper's Visualize.js - a feature that allows Jasper content to embed framelessly in applications. I suspect CA will implement this as a portlet type much like Xcelsius. When asked at CAW when this feature will be available the answer was soon - but not in the next release. This is understandable. This was also a time when the next release was due in December - so I'm open to being pleasantly surprised but not planning on it as per the script.
Go download the version 6 Studio. Don't worry about server version / client version mismatch. The Studio client's connections are backwards compatible. I've connected the 6 client successfully to a 5.6 server.
Things I like so far from just a couple proof of concept conversion & deployments:
- Jasper Reports development is 'band' development. If you have seat time with Crystal, it's the same concept. I bet one can do 'block' development as well, I just haven't got that far yet.
- Jasper Studio is Eclipse. If you have seat time with Eclipse this is again an easy leap. Down side here is Eclipse is still Eclipse. It can be and does everything... rudimentary well. Eclipse vets will shrug it off and just get the job done (I've already had a Studio install eat itself via an update. Big deal. Delete and reinstall). I expect to hear much noise out of those without Eclipse experience about the Eclipse experience. Cowperson up.
- Jasper Reports are simply compiled XML files (JRXML). Theoretically one can develop in notepad...
- Jasper Reports support Java, JavaScript and Groovy for programmatic work. Should be cool, powerful stuff. I have a couple ideas...
- I love the Template capability. This will allow us to create templates that we as well as ad hoc users can 'apply' to their reports for branding purposes. This will really up the fit and finish of what our users run around with which will positively reflect tenfold on us. Creating branded templates for our organizations should be the first thing us technical folks should do. If one doesn't have technical folks - pay CA or any of the excellent 3rd party vendors to do this. Best money you can spend - you won't be disappointed.
- I like that I can do base64 images! No files to embed, deploy or manage.
You had a question about training. I have budget set aside for training, but after reading the docs, spending some time with the demo server (download the VM from JasperSoft) and doing a couple mock conversions - I don't know how much more there is to be discovered. I may take Jasper's Studio training just because I can. If one doesn't have a lot of time for learning-by-doing, surely the training will be an opportunity to pomodoro on this and be an efficient use of time.
The ETL tool is not Jasper's but Pentaho Kettle. I don't know how this will factor in and/or how much we'll need to know & maintain here. Since the flag for what's to be included in the datamart is set in Clarity Studio (<-- that's genius) - it should just be a nightly job that runs that we don't touch. My organization has specific needs around dynamic report bursting, so I'm planning on doing some Kettle development (Java) for this. A casual conversation with those in the know at CA at CAW, no one saw any reason why customers couldn't do this.
The new datamart is obviously a big part of this. For experienced Clarity developers like yourself an ERD will do. For others, I'm certain CA will have a class.
Of course I'm not product management and all of this omits the known & unknown unknowns, is subject to change, etc.
Nothing to it but to do it! Looking forward to getting my hands on release software (we do not alpha or beta test) and rolling up my sleeves.
HTH,
Rob