Enterprise Reporting: Smarter, Faster, Cleaner

Okay. Hello everyone. Welcome. So we are here. Let's wait a moment so that everyone can connect. Okay, there are already almost 100 participants. So let's go. Thank you for joining us today for this live session. Enterprise reports smarter, faster, and cleaner. My name is Vincent and I'm part of the R&D team at Four Js and I would like to I'll be your host for your next 30 minutes. First, I would like to inform you that your microphone are muted to avoid any disturbance. So you will you will

receive a link to the recording after this webinar and you can ask your question anytime in the Q&A feature. We'll have an extra 15 minutes at the end of the webinar to answer them. So if you are here, it's probably because reporting is still a pain point in your organization. Whether you're building reports, maintaining them, or just trying to make them work across formats and systems it's not as smooth as it should be. Today, we want to show you that there's a better way. We'll explore how

Genero Report Writer addresses many of the frustrations teams face with traditional tools, reporting tools, and how it give you back control, clarity, and speed. I welcome two expert in enterprise reporting solutions. Kathleen Kesterson, former Crystal Reports user, now part of the report writer team. Hi Kathleen. Hi Vincent. And Alex Geller, the architect of Genero Report Writer. Hi Alex. Vincent. So thank you for joining me. Let's dive in. first I'd like to take a moment

to introduce Four Js. We provide development tools to help companies create or modernize mission critical applications to meet today's demand. And with a single code, you can deploy your solution on desktop, mobile, devices or web. Four Js offers also Genero Report Writer an enterprise reporting tool made for high volume APIs, robustness and scalability. We'll have the chance to see it in action in few minutes. Now, Alex, I have for you my a first

question. We are in 25. So, why are enterprise reports still so hard to get it right? If if I look around what is available today, I think I would still have the same motivation that I had 20 years ago when we set out to develop something. ad hoc tools have their shortcomings. They are very easy to use, but they lack the sophistication. and now things have also changed. people are storing data and accessing with hibernate. They're maybe even in NoSQL databases. uh

they are using microservices to to develop their applications. They're running in the cloud. And when I look around what tools can I find to adequately cater for this there still is a need for something that does this job well. H I understand. Thanks for your explanation, Kathleen. what are the main frustrations teams face with traditional reporting tools today? Oh yeah. So I come from using Crystal Reports as we said before. So when I was building reports

part of the biggest frustration I had was being able to pull the data from multiple sources. And with that you usually run into an issue where in Crystal Reports you create so many sub queries and what happens is the report will then slow down and then sometimes not even run which causes a really big problem for end users. another one is that your field data it's too large. So what'll end up happening is it will fall off the report when it's running and you won't get to see all the data that is supposed to pull into the

field itself. So it's not truly a dynamic kind of situation. Another thing is like adding in a header line. it can be a tedious task. So when you're trying to draw lines, if you don't draw those lines accurately, they will end up looking really off. even if it's just like a millimeter too far over when you print it out, it could end up being really far off the page. So you that's another frustration that you run into when you design reports. All right, I think things are pretty clear now. Um,

Alex, what makes Genero Report Writer different? one of the main things that we do differently, for example, is that we distinguish between the data source and the design of the data source. we want end users to be able to design the reports, but we don't want them to have to know thousands of tables and 10,00ands of fields. That's the first thing. The second thing is we don't want end users to their reports to stop working because somebody changed the database. We also don't want

end users to know how to compute fields in the invoice for example how the total how the taxes computed and stuff like that. So the whole issue with that is we don't directly go to the database for that reason but we read the data from a process. So we call that a data source. anything that is capable of producing a stream of data structured data not just a flat table and provides a schema for it in the format XML or JSON is a valid data source for us and then we provide the tools so that people can develop these data sources in an elegant way if

they happen to go to a relational database but that's just one option I think that is one big thing in application integration the reporting tool should read the data from the application from cooked data and not directly go to the database and when if you use an ad hoc tool you have this problem that's one of the main things that we do differently then they are done and then of course we are very very sophisticated when it comes to do things in the layout so that typically if you have an answer can I do a multicolumn

report or that's goes over several pages and where the stripe model of Crystal Reports wouldn't be able to handle it. The answer is yes. Yes, I see. Thank you. So, Kathle, in this situation, where do you think who do you think Genero Report Writer is best suited to? Yeah. So, gener report writer is best suited for people who are looking to monetize their reporting solution. So, we're not talking that you're going to have to recreate the wheels. So later we're going to talk

about a migration services but we we offer the ability to not have to start from scratch. So that's something that we offer. another thing with that is somebody who's got complex data sources and they're looking to make sure that their reports aren't going to break and that the designing of the layout is dynamic and it's going to expand. They want to make it more modern and also having different outputs. your normal PDF output. Well, that's all great and dandy, but a lot of people,

especially where I came from, we always exported into Excel and we were always in Excel changing up some information. So that's kind of looking at multiple different output options is definitely people that we look for. and then also people looking for the scalability and pixel perfect reporting. If if you want your report to look exactly what it's supposed to look like, we are a pixel perfect solution that offers scalable results, but we also offer a built-in validation which will be discussed here in a minute.

Okay, thank you. I think it will help a lot. So, Alex, now we are looking forward to discovering Genero Report Writer. Can you give us a demo? If you're ready, if you're ready, you can take control of the screen. Absolutely. One second. Let me share my screen. So, the solution can do a lot of things and I think you've selected five points that you find interesting to share. Absolutely. Let me share screen picture and picture can. Okay. Let me

t are you able to see my screen now? Yes, it's okay. Very good. So then yeah hi everybody once more. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to show the report writer. the software that you see right here is Genero Studio we call it. It is you can download it from our website. it runs in Linux, in Mac OS and Windows. and I will now cherrypick some features from report writer showing you using the tool and showing some of the highlights. I will start with

here you see an example. This is a simple demo that comes with the product that you can try like that. It has some 15 20 different designs based on one data source. this data source is a JDBC data source small database some 8 n tables doing kind of like an invoice type of report. maybe just a quick walk through on the tool itself. we have the typical toolbox with the the the items that you find in any other reporting tool. Also maybe some interesting things are vertical

boxes that in the stripe model of typical reporting tools you won't find they allow you to do vertical layouts that span pages and things like that that that cross the stripe basically high level things like tables unusual things perhaps like PDF box so you can you can have a a terms or a technical drawing that you have in PDF inside the report image boxes maybe to mention that we support unusual formats like SVG and PDF as image formats so that for example if you have a logo like this for in this

example it's a SVG image so it scales with high quality and if you put it in a PDF it will be small and it will reproduce very well on on on printers then we have the usual charts pivot tables things a whole zoo of barcodes codes we we they are all natively implemented by us. so we have all the bells and whistles and there these are just the most popular ones. We have more than those. For example, this report here has an OMR barcode in which we encode for for an enveloping machine to say in a batch of

reports which of the customer should go in in in one envelope. And then here may be something that is also very usable. If your application has the entry of rich text to describe an article for example then of course you want that text to be printed on the report then HTML box or which text box comes in handy. Another very very nice and feature that for example Crystal Reports and Jasper don't have is what we call dynamic layout. if I change the text of phone to telephone numa, you see that the that the field

changes size that is relevant. For example, you can have any string constant or value coming from the database. You click localize text and then you have one invoice that can be translated in multiple languages. And I can simulate what happens here actually if this sized even further. If I take it a little further. Exactly. So, typically well-made reports, you can do what you do in other reporting tools, which is to position items, but typically reports that are well-designed flow. So, you can change the paper size. You can change

the the the the constants in the text and the layout will not be broken if the report is run. Another important feature is the expression language which is type safe. So for example here the system knows that the the the field bill name is string. So now if I if I were to convert it to to a number it would say up here you can see expression incomplete meaning that I still need to do something about it. So for example if I do now I round it and then I convert it to a string again it would be okay. And now we can

we have another mechanism which we call impact analysis. If now in the data source bill name which apparently contained a number and I read it converted to a number and then to a string changed type because somebody changed the data source. you would get an error message at compile time. So that is a very important feature if if customers are modifying the reports. So they have just not one report they have maybe hundreds if not thousands of reports in some cases and then as the application provider

you're providing him with an update. So you can provide him with the with the schemas of the data up front and he will know which reports he has to fix. a report is based as I said before on on a schema. You see here we have we have two tables but there can be many more. I can show you reports that have 20 30 different records. for example just imagine a a delivery note that will have a package a list of packaging instruction list of handling instructions a list of addresses where to go to and so on. And that's

where the flat table model of tools like JasperReports or or Crystal Reports fall flat to not being able to model that or if they do they do it then by subreport but they encounter a lot of performance problems because they reverse the network direction by requering from the client to the server. So we don't do that. We ship a stream. So this is the data source. We we have several formats of this is XML schema that that we support. and the input format is typically XML or JSON. So and then we have the runtime.

at runtime also in this case first of all we make no assumptions about how the application is written. So so so this demo here is provides demonstrations for applications that are written. this one is a small Java swing application and we have a C# application those are desktop applications but those things are more and more coming obsolete but we are agnostic to that problem because we don't deal with user interface we don't do the user interface the only user

interface that we provide is a progressive viewer that can be embedded that is either available as a desktop application or it is available as a HTML element that can be put inside an HTML application that is using the browser. So, and this little demo that you get with the product demonstrates all the the whole product is basically an API rather than it is an application. So, in this dialogue is available as source code. You can select here the different designs of the report. So, for example, I I select here

the order report. I can select different output formats. So now I say preview and it'll show me the report that I've just been editing as a PDF. but I could also use our progressive viewer just to show that for a second. you see I will show it later maybe with some more data data that it shows you the first page even though potentially thousands of pages are still in the making. or various other formats. For example, let's take this report to

Excel. I would have expected now. Oh, there it is. Now we're going to see it twice. So, yeah. So the same report in Excel two times or if we we could also have it in in RTF just to prove the point so that we get the edit edit report in an editable format or a different design for the same data source. For example, we could see it as a dashboard maybe in the in the in the browser base or as a PDF whatever. So here we have a dashboard going taking the the the batch of of of these invoices showing it by

areas showing it by product groups and a pivot table for it or maybe I I know I'm running out of time. I will hurry a little bit. let me what is other interesting a dynamic pivot table. This is also very interesting because it really shows that the product is an API. I go preview and here we show all the bells and whistles of a pivot table. But again this dialogue is not part of our product. This dialogue is written by as is available as source code. And here I can now select the dimensions of this pivot table, the measures of the of

the pivot table. And right now it's drawn as a table. Let's let's say okay. So it gives me a fivepaged pivot table. But now I can start changing that and running it again. let's say for example I don't want to see the fact rows and I don't Yeah, let's start with that. So now I don't you see the difference? I don't I didn't display the fact rows. So now it's only one page or I could even condense it even more. preview it again. And Oh, I want the totals, but I don't

want Yeah. So now I get the the complete totals or even other stuff. It's all part of the pivot table. Let's put the this computation back and let's draw it for example as a bar co bar chart for example bar 3D run it again so now we have it by areas or I could take it one more run it again and now maybe choose a totally different dimension with drag and drop here I do it by countries and now we have statistics by country. So what I'm showing here is not a part of our product but something that

you can add to your application to do that and that users are able to we have APIs that give you the possibility to enumerate the dimensions, the measures and to set up the pivot table to to render that. So what else do I have on my list that I didn't show that I wanted to show? maybe maybe some words on on the output format about because as we are doing this for years if I did this on PDF. Okay, we can do the pivot table on PDF also.

So report preview. Yes. Some words on the sophistication of of PDF. As I said, I pointed out already images that they are in high quality. One of the important things about PDF output is that it's be small because it's probably going to be archived or send an email. So that the images are high quality. If images are in the product, for example, here we have an image that's two times in there, it will be put in the final document only once. what else? If you're using fonts, we will embed every

any font that you have. Also, fonts that are typically not embedded into PDF, we'll convert them and embed them in the PDF. And we will also embed only the characters that are actually used in this document in the PDF in the end. So, okay. Yeah, there's many more things to show, but in the shortness of the time, I will conclude it at this point. And Vincent, I give it back to you now. Thank you very much, Alex. And can you see my screen? Yes. Yes. Okay. Good. So, thank you for for this very interesting demo. It seems

very powerful. So, now I have an another question for you, Alex. What's your road map for the months ahead? We have lots of nice things that we are making. We are also looking into AI and have some interesting ideas there that are under development. One thing of particular interest is now ready for shipment. It will be shipped this fall. U it is the designer that you just saw now. but for the the for the browser for the web. So people can integrate the report designer in their

application and put end users in the position to modify the reports of their application in the application and immediately see the the the the the results the the the the changes. it's also the focus was on absolute ease of use. It's it is a report designer. So basically if people know how to operate a word processor, they should be good to to to use this tool. It's it should go without training and you can discover all the functionality that the tool has. It's either visible in the toolbar or it isn't there. So no control keys to hold,

no complicated things to know. It's completely vizywig. so yes we think that is an step forward and a a benefit for our customers. Okay, great. I can't wait to see it all. So, Kathleen, now from your experience as a former Crystal Reports user, can you share your thought about this demo? Oh, yeah, most definitely. So, one of the biggest improvements that I see with this tool with Genero Report Writer is you have the

ability to adjust the layout and the design without ever having to touch the data. So you're removing any sort of risk that comes with having the two sourced together. something else is that we actually offer some templates. So our templates are able to be assigned by you as well. So you can create your own templates. But what that does is it allows you to create something that so say you pull something from the general ledger and you just want these this one layout and all it is is dumping the data out. Well, you can

create that as a template and so then you're never having to recreate the wheel and having to redo the report by doing that. So, that's another really cool feature that Janer report writer has. something else that you got to see was him moving around the fields. But what you can also do when you add a new field, it is the same concept. So, we have the dynamic layout. So, when you add a new field, it will move to shift and allow that field to be placed in between. So you're not having to grab multiple things and move them

around to get something to fit where it should. Something else like I said before, the built-in validation, being able to run the report as you go to see if it's running the way you want, if you're seeing the data you want. You know, that's very important as a report designer, making sure that what you see is what you're going to get in the end. So that's an really important thing. And then something else that is extremely important is that you're able to format everything. So every option that you have in there, whether it's a text box,

an image, whatever it is, you're able to format it. So you can add a background color, you can add a border, you can change the border up to where it's just the bottom border or it's three borders. So you're able to create a report a lot easier. Great. Thanks for your expert feedback. Now, Alex, let's talk about use cases. Where do you think Genero Report Writer makes the biggest difference really caters for integration into applications so it's stealthy you don't see an alien

product that somehow is imposed on on on on your product. It fits very well with modern applications that are in the cloud. maybe software as a service. yeah, and we do all the domain specific stuff since we do this for years. Barcodes, labels, point of sale, printer tray selection, all that stuff that you you you that tools that are typically tools that are made to to make ad hoc reports don't cater for. We we cater for all the low-level stuff that is also it's a API.

It is a it is a tool that integrates for developers and also caters for end users because that do the reports for the application in a way that so that we we we we don't have that a tradeoff between sophistication and and ease of use. Okay. So listening to you I understand that you want to bring real solutions to enterprise reporting with Genero Report Writer. It's very clear. So Kathleen now I know there are people in our audience who are

frustrated with our reporting solution. They like to find an efficient solution with a living road map. What can you do for them? Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier we actually offer a couple of services. So our first service that we offer is the reporting analysis. this is specialized just for Crystal Reports as of right now. But if you are a Crystal Reports user and you want to understand more about what your reports contain and get insights into each and every one of your reports, then we have a solution

for you. So we offer offer a comprehensive look into them and we offer two packages. One being a summary. So we'll just give you a base overview of some some key highlights and then we also have a detailed package. Our next service is our migration service. So if you believe that we are the right solution for you, doesn't matter what reporting solution you're currently on, it could be Crystal Reports, could be Jasper, could just be Excel or just PDF. we actually offer migration service. So what that is is that we are going to

preserve your existing report. So you're not going to lose all the time and effort that you put in. And you're also not having to recreate the wheel when it comes to moving these reports over. And it's also allowing you to leave your team to do their normal day-to-day tasks, which I know can be very timeconuming when you're adding a migration on top of it. So, by doing our migration service, your team can continue their day-to-day while we handle it in the background and we migrate you seamlessly just behind

the scenes, not interrupting your normal business. Well, I have to admit I've never seen this type of service before. It's very useful. now, if someone thinking this is exactly what we need, what's the the next move? The next move is going to book an introductory call with me. So after this webinar has ended, you're actually going to be taken to a web page where there's going to be a link and that link and Stacy has also posted it into the chat herself. this link is to book

directly with me any type of our services that we offer. So the introductory call if you're looking at Genero Report writer for reporting alternative, book that session with me. We will talk about your pain points, what you wish you have, what you don't have, talk about your challenges, and then after that, we will schedule a customized demo based upon everything we've learned in our introductory call. And so then we can tailor that based upon what we find out. If you're a Crystal Reports user and you're wanting

to learn more about the analysis tool, you can also book that session with me and we can talk about your Crystal Reports, what we have to offer, and we can discuss it a little further from there. That's great. So now it's time for live Q&A. If you can stay longer with us, don't worry. You'll receive an email with a link to the recording so you can watch it at home with a cup of coffee or tea. We also send you another email with a link to specific content and access to Catherine calendar to book a meeting if

you want. I hope this session helped you better understand how Genero Report Writer can simplify and straighten your enterprise reporting. Now, let's open the floor for your questions. Feel free to drop them in the Q&A feature and we'll answer as many as we can. Oh, I see that we have already a lot of question. That's that's great. the first one how easy how is it to create how easy is it to create a report from scratch? That's for you, Alex. Yes. Kathine already mentioned it, we

didn't show it. we have a whole set of templates. So report for template would be the thing to to get going quickly, very quickly. and otherwise also the the focus is on productivity. yes, it's easy to do a report from scratch. Okay, thanks. another one, can an end users adjust the report after it has been run? Very good question. Absolutely. Absolutely. Of course. Yes. Oh, adjust the report after it has been run. But well the the the if it's an excel output or or a word output then that can be

modified but I think that the question is more about the report design and that can be modified at any time at any point in time and the moment that the modification is done the next run of the report it will be the modified report. Okay I think so. So another one can you run a report from multiple databases? Yes. we have the business application modeler that is capable of creating cross database queries but it is a programmer's tool so that if your

report if if you write a data source by yourself you can access not only databases you can access files services all kinds of things and integrated into the report. It's not only databases. Mhm. next question. How easy how easy to make changes after it was I think you already answered this one. Yeah. next one. How does report performance are compared to Crystal Reports? I would say we are always at least as fast and most of the time faster. uh

Crystal Reports has one big problem which is reports that contain a lot of subreports have a bad performance. We don't reverse the network direction during processing. We we create the the the output stream close to the database so that we are not dependent on the latency so much. u so typically we run with much better performance. Okay, another question. Can we integrate it with our existing stack still for you Alex? Yes, I I think integration is one of the strongest points that we have.

So, as I said, anything that can produce a stream of data and a schema for that data is a source for us. Okay. Thanks. so many question. Do you have a demo I can show my team? So I don't know if Kathleen or you Alex can answer. Oh, absolutely. The demo that I did is part of the distribution and there's more demos. I just showed one of five. Okay. And another one is Genero Report Writer accessible by mobile client. Yes. as you have seen uh

the the application can produce the documents. So of course the the the the application can ship the PDF to the to the mobile device and show it there. you can have the progressive viewer in the browser. if you are planning to do an app that is solely on the on the on the mobile phone then for that the answer currently is no. That for the moment is not possible. Okay, understood. And the last question for today if a client needs to print

hundreds of thousands of report daily like payroll especially on paydays is report writer prepared for high processing volumes. Can you elaborate on how? Yeah. Yes. Yes. That is one of our strong points indeed. that we have exactly these kind of customers that have these kinds of problems. that that needs one example is the pension system in Mexico where all the pensioners there are PDFs that are that are downloaded during one day in the in the month with extreme high load and we cater for

that kind of stuff high volume in in limited time window. We are we are fully scalable. We are load balancable. we are contextf free. So yes there it will always scale. Okay. Thanks Alex. So that's it for today and stay tuned for for more webinars to come. If we haven't answer all your questions, we'll write you to you personally in the next few days. So thank you again for your time and your engagement. We hope this session gave you some new useful insight and spacked new ideas for your reporting

strategy. Please stay online after this webinar. You'll be redirected to a follow-up page. And don't forget to download the discovery discovery kit we've prepared especially for you. On behalf of all of us at Four Js, Kathleen, Alex, and myself, thank you and see you soon. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.