From time to time I get support requests from users who try to create reports in the latest Pentaho Report Designer and then try to run it in a ancient installation of the Pentaho BI-Server. I already wrote about the limitations Einstein placed on us software developers, so lets all agree – it’s not possible and there will be no fix.

Along with a Voodoo-security change that obscures all passwords stored in a PRPT file, I now prevent the horse from ever drinking petrol again. I added a strict check while a report is parsed so that newer versions of a PRPT file cannot be opened in older servers. Whenever you try such a thing, you will now get a very clear error message telling you:

The report file you are trying to load was created with Pentaho Reporting 12.0 but you are trying to run it with Pentaho Reporting 3.9.0. Please update your reporting installation to match the report designer that was used to create this file.

and if you just missed a patch release, you will be able to continue, but get a warning urging you to upgrade.

The report file you are trying to load was created with Pentaho Reporting 3.9.5 but you are trying to run it with Pentaho Reporting 3.9.0. Your reporting engine version may not have all features or bug-fixes required to display this report properly.

Older releases that did not store version information in a usable format inside the PRPT files will not be checked. This check only applies to released versions. All development versions do not store any version information and do not validate version information they may find in the files. If you are using development versions I assume you know what you are doing.

For the upcoming 3.9.0 release, you won’t see any impact. The first time this check will be hit will be Pentaho Reporting 4.0 later next year and from that moment on I will never have to talk about poisoning my poor old horse with petrol again (it prefers bio-diesel anyway).