Two more days and we will all have a blast of a time in Lisbon. This year with a large release close by I will solely concentrate on picking the brains of our fellow community members to see what bugs everyone most.
Developing a project as large and complex as Pentaho Reporting is like steering a large container ship. Many times we find ourself restricted by the existing API and the holy grail of API-level backward compatibility. Letting reports tell the datasources how to sort data? Forget it. Efficient crosstabbing within the corset of the layouting API – difficult. Multi-column layout without exploding memory consumption – you must be kidding!
The next release will be a major-number release called “4.0” – so I’m finally free to get rid of a couple of old mistakes and to comb through the API to bury a few dead bodies. For releases like this we can break up APIs and carve in more efficient ways to funnel information around. The sky is the limit once more.
Hopefully armed with loads of feedback and real-world needs and wishes we can then lay the architectural ground work for the next years to come. So don’t get curbed by reality – bring in your deepest desires. When I know your wants and wishes for in the next few years I can shape the API so that we can bring them all in.
Right now my personal list looks like that (In no particular order and not everything comes in the 4.0 release 😉 ):
- Truly Dynamic report parameter – enable/disable based on previous parameters
- Auto-Sorted data from datasources
- Native Crosstabbing
- CSS based styles system with all the perks it brings (selectors, external style definitions)
- Dynamically loaded subreports
- CDA integration (yes, Pedro, I know I’m slow)
- Add ProtoVis and Pentaho Charts to the designer (yes, I know, Pedro, I know …)
- Cell-based metadata support
- OLE-style inline-editor for subreports – see your content instead of a generic blue box
- Parameter layouting
- GeoBI components (Maps, visualizations)
- PDF files as report content
- JavaScript widget library for HTML and PDF
- Kill the WAQR
- A Lightweight Web-Based Report Designer (iWAQR)
- Better Inline-Subreport performance
- Multi-Column layout
- A smarter Report-Wizard
So how does your wishlist look like?
All of the above? In 4.0? Excellent … ;o)