ReportServer Reviews & Product Details

Ability to link all types of reports under one 'hood'.

Open source.

Dashboard.

Ability to use Groovy to extend functionality (haven't tested this yet though)

I looked at uisng Report Server, Birt F-type hub, or JasperReports server. I ended up choosing Report Server as it was the only one that would enable to both use the BIRT reports I had already designed and working, allow me to extend to use various other reports (like Jasper), allow dynamic lists, and give a dashboard. To be fair, it looks and feels a lot like the Birt F-type, but without all the restrictions.

Getting the Report Server to use BIRT reports, my MySQL server, etc., was a breeze. It was literally only a matter of loading up the reports and they ran the same they did in Tomcat7, but perhaps a bit slower, which wasn't a problem for me. Using sql statement was also easy, just be sure not to include the ; at the end of your statement as this causes an error for some reason. Took me a little while to figure that out. Also, best not to include spaces in alias names, again, another bit of time to resolve that--with the help of the forum.

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Setup.

Permission management.

Documentation.

The bitnami installer didn't work on my RHEL 5 host--it was unable to find the mysql server for some unknown reason, so I had to do a manual installation. The guide to this is actually pretty good. I already had Tomcat7 and a MySQL database installed and working to serve up BIRT reports, so those steps were already completed.

I had a few issues configuring the JVM settings using setenv.sh for report server, but once that was resolved Report Server loaded up. There were also a few tricks like having to set the crypto keys in both the reportserver.properties file (as it states in the guide)...but then also ensuring you do it in the crypto file once report server is running as well, which meant I had to reinstall once.

Overall, setup probably took me a day...but the reinstall only took about 30 minutes once everything to get it working correctly was in place.

Report Server gives incredible ability to manage permissions, but this comes at a cost, you have to set them all up, and ensure they work the way you expect. Oddly, this part took me the longest to figure out. In the end, the best way I found was to create a folder, like 'Staff', add users to that folder, and then set all the permissions using the 'Staff' folder. Otherwise, you will be setting permissions forever if you have more than 10 users. :) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

You can use ReportServer in a variety of scenarios for different tasks. The range goes from high-formatted reports (Management Information System) via self-service BI (ad hoc reporting) to automated interfaces to third systems.

ReportServer has all the features that one would expect from a modern reporting platform. e.g. comprehensive permissions, a scheduler, the opportunity to develop scripts for automating, reports in third systems incorporate etc.

Report Server is very easy to install and use.

if you need support, you can get fast answers and solutions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There could be more examples in the documentation some parts could be explained more detailed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like its concept that they merged many different products and I can choose what fit best for my needs. During the test we have tried the different solutions and was able to decide which components we exactly need. Although there are more components the end user does not really realize that the interface hide it.

I like the interface. It is clear and well usable. I hold the idea of TeamSpace good.

The dynamic list is a great feature, it gives the user quite a lot setting possibilities directly from the interface. It is connected with the Saiku engine so the pivot table capability looks great.

The staff is helpful and open for extra demands as well. They continuously read and comment their forum as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I had problems with the documentation. The User Guide is quite good but the Administration and the Scripting Guide was a bit short for my knowledge (I am not a JAVA programmer, maybe this is the reason.)

You will find lot of information on the net about the components but there are just a few information from the ReportServer itself (mainly their official forum). I was spending many time with looking for the right syntax because I did not want to flood the forum. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The report manager was intuitive enough and quite useful. I was able to create _many_ reports and expose them to a ton of business users. The fact that these could be parameterized provided with a nice option which a lot of business users could use for self serve.

The access management was well maintained and easy to control Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The dashboards interface wasn't intuitive enough and I was unable to make great use of it.

I'd have liked to have a BIRT designer in-built as well. Having to work on different tools and then update wasn't nice. Also, I couldn't import multiple reports together and/or link these reports.

I created mysql reports and one thing that i missed was to pass multiple values as a parameter - I'd like a tool which supports multiple values in a parameter (and alters/reads the query accordingly - ex - support '=' and 'IN' depending on the parameter). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I loved the web interface, the fact it was customization and shareable. Made it a really recognizable product. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It wasn't very intuitive, I had to do some digging around to find certain things out - users and roles didnt seem to make sense to the rest of the product. This could be a simple wording issue, but I'd like to see much more of the design automated Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One of the main benefits for us was the Crystal Report integration. Between web browser accessible crystal reports and scheduling/permissions this was an amazing find for our business Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My only issues were the install process. After a few failed attempts I managed to crack it and now it's up, no need to touch it Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- Its free

- It supports several reporting tools

- It offers scheduling, mailing of reports, dashboarding and user management

- It is available in serveral languages Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Usability could be a tad better.

Some things are difficult to find out, the manual is a must.

The community support is excellent and provides fast and competent answers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Dashboard functionality of the product. Its easy to build reports - particularly dynamic SQL reports. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some of the tasks are not well explained in the documentation. Particularly using BIRT reports and Crystal reports. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's free to use, has an appealing GUI and all needed functionality and an active User Forum and a speedy support team even to free users Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's not open source, so you can not fix bugs in codebase yourself Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The variety of report types, the posibillity to schedulle, scheduller history, the posibillity of report parametrization, excel export Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Hard to migrate on other server, old version of jxls support, the mail setup Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.