Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers

In Detail

Pentaho Reporting lets you create, generate, and distribute rich and sophisticated report content from different data sources. Knowing how to use it quickly and efficiently gives you the edge in producing reports from your database. If you have been looking for a book that has plenty of easy-to-understand instructions and also contains lots of examples and screenshots, this is where your search ends.

This book shows you how to replace or build your enterprise reporting solution from scratch with Pentaho’s Reporting Suite. Through detailed examples, it dives deeply into all aspects of Pentaho’s reporting functionalities, providing you with the knowledge you need to master report creation.

This book starts off with a number of examples to get you familiar with the tools and technology of the Pentaho Reporting Suite. Then, with additional examples, it goes into advanced subjects such as charting, sub-reporting, cross tabs, as well as API generation of reports. There are also details and examples on extending Pentaho’s open source reporting engine. The reader will learn the ins and outs of Pentaho Report Designer, including a cheat sheet with all the available short-cut keys, to make report design efficient and painless.

Embedding reports into your Java application can be difficult. With Pentaho Reporting it’s just a few lines of code. The book provides examples of how to embed reporting into your J2EE and client Java applications, as well as showing you how to build dynamic reports from scratch using Pentaho Reporting’s simple Java Bean-based report generation API.

Setting up and integrating a reporting server in an enterprise environment can be arduous. In addition to learning how to build great embeddable reports, you’ll also learn how to combine Pentaho Reporting with Pentaho’s BI Server for a zero-code, easy-to-configure, enterprise reporting solution.

What you will learn from this book

• Install and get started with Pentaho Reporting
• Build great-looking reports that render as PDF, Excel, and HTML using Pentaho Report Designer
• Learn the ins and outs of Pentaho Report Designer, including a list of short-cut keys for quick report generation
• Configure your JDBC database and other data sources to drive dynamic reports
• Include Pie, Bar, Line, and many other chart types within your reports, as well as other graphics
• Parameterize your reports, using the open formula standard to drive calculations within your reports
• Add sub-reports and cross tabs in your reports to more effectively present information
• Build interactive Swing and HTML reports that are more like dashboards than traditional static enterprise reports
• Build Pentaho Reports programmatically with easy-to-use XML and Java APIs
• Learn to write your own open formula functions and custom graphical elements in reports
• Write your own extensions to Pentaho Reporting, for complete integration and customization into your environment
• Find out why you should use open source reporting over proprietary reporting offerings (hint: it’s free and you can customize it)
• Install Pentaho’s BI Server and deploy your reports with permissions and scheduling with zero code.

Chapter 1 An introduction to Pentaho Reporting – Get a quick overview of Pentaho Reporting, including a feature summary and architectural summary, as well as a history of the product.

Chapter 2 Pentaho Reporting client and enterprise examples – Install and create reports, and learn to embed reports in your J2EE and client Java applications.

Chapter 3 Pentaho Reporting examples in the real world – Connect to a JDBC data source and create realistic inventory, balance, and invoice reports, including charts and sub-reports.

Chapter 4 Design and layout in Pentaho’s Report Designer – Take a deep dive into Pentaho’s Report Designer, learning how to create great-looking reports.

Chapter 5 Working with data sources – Learn the various ways to connect your report to live data, including JDBC, Hibernate, Java Beans, OLAP, and many other data sources.

Chapter 6 Including charts and graphics in reports – Incorporate Pie, Bar, Line and many other chart types in your reports, as well as including dynamic images in your report.

Chapter 7 Parameterization, functions, formulas and style expressions in reports – Define parameters for dynamic report generation. Write formulas and use available functions for rich summary and calculated values in your reports. Dynamically adjust colors and styles using expressions in your report.

Chapter 8 Adding sub-reports and cross tabs to reports – Build reports that include side-by-side sub-reports and cross tabs.

Chapter 9 Building interactive reports – These aren’t standard boring static reports. Learn how to add dynamic interaction to HTML and Swing reports, for immediate feedback and dashboard-like functionality.

Chapter 10 API-based report generation – Build reports from XML and by using Pentaho Reporting’s Java Bean API.

Chapter 11 Extending Pentaho Reporting – Learn to write custom functions and elements within Pentaho Reporting.

Chapter 12 Additional Pentaho Reporting topics – Discover how to use Pentaho Reporting with the Pentaho BI Server, including Pentaho Metadata. Learn more about Pentaho Reporting’s open source approach, and how you can contribute to the free software movement.

Approach

This hands-on tutorial, filled with exercises and examples, introduces the reader to a variety of concepts within Pentaho Reporting. With screenshots that show you how reports look at design time as well as how they should look when rendered as PDF, Excel, or HTML, this book also contains complete example source code that you can copy and paste into your environment to get up and running quickly.

Who this book is written for

This book is primarily written for Java developers who want to assemble custom reporting solutions with Pentaho Reporting. Their main interest is in the technical details of creating reports and they want to see how to solve common report problems with a minimum of fuss; they do not need an overview of BI or the importance of reporting.

Secondary audiences of this book are information technologists who need to install a reporting solution in their environment, and want to learn advanced concepts within Pentaho Reporting such as sub-reports, cross-tabs, data source configuration, and metadata-based reporting.

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Apache Maven 2 Effective Implementation

In Detail

By building up a sample application, this book guides developers painlessly through building a project with Maven. This book shows you how to combine Maven with Continuum and Archiva, which will allow you to build an efficient, secure application and make developing in a team easy.

You may already be aware of the pitfalls of ‘integration hell’ caused by changed code being submitted to repositories by a number of developers. When you implement Continuum in your build, you can easily perform continuous integration, avoiding timely rework and reducing cost and valuable time. You will be able to use Maven more efficiently in a team after you learn how to set up Archiva, Apache’s repository manager.

It’s easy to quickly get to work with Maven and get the most out of its related tools when you follow the sequential coverage of the sample application in this book. A focus on team environments ensures that you will avoid the pitfalls that are all too common when working in a team. Soon, by learning the best practices of working with Maven, you will have built an effective, secure Java application.

What you will learn from this book

• Install Apache Maven and follow the sample application to build up your project as quickly as possible
• Test your applications to ensure maximum stability using Maven’s inbuilt tools
• Use Maven’s report and checking tools to ensure the health of your projects
• Explore Apache Continuum which will help you to ensure the health of your source code
• Improve your team builds with the powerful combination of Maven, Archiva and Continuum
• Install and run the repository manager Apache Archiva

Approach

All material in the book will be worked through by example, building up a sample application. It is intended to be read through in sequence, though once complete, should serve as a suitable reference for certain cases that can be referred to directly.

Who this book is written for

This book is for Java developers who want to get started with Apache Maven. If you are tasked with build automation in your company, this book will help you to quickly and easily get started with Maven in order to improve the efficiency of your builds.

Brett Porter is a software developer from Sydney, Australia with a passion for development tooling, and automation. Seeking a more standardized and reproducible solution to organize, build, and deploy a number of software projects across teams, he discovered an early beta of Maven 1.0 in 2003, and has been heavily involved in the development of the project since. He is a member of the Apache Maven Project Management Committee, and has conducted presentations and training on Maven and related tooling at several conferences and events. He founded the Archiva project in 2005. Brett is also a member of the Apache Software Foundation.

Brett is currently VP, Product Development at G2iX, in charge of the Maestro division. He and his team seek to make developers more efficient by offering support and services for development and automation tools including Apache Maven, Apache Continuum, Apache Archiva, and Selenium.

Brett was co-author of the book Better Builds with Maven, the first book to be written about the Maven 2.0 release in 2005, and has been involved in reviewing Maven: A Developer’s Notebook and Java Power Tools.
Maria Odea Ching

Maria Ching grew up in a small town called Daet, then moved to Manila when she went to college. She took up Computer Studies at De La Salle University and graduated in 2005. She started using open source tools from her first job after graduating and from then on, got interested in everything open source. When she came to work for Exist, she got assigned in a project doing a lot of development work in open source projects, specifically Maven, Continuum, and Archiva. Back then, Continuum and Archiva (formerly named Maven Repository Manager) were still sub-projects of Maven. Eventually, she became a committer, then a PMC member of Maven. In 2008, Continuum and Archiva became top-level projects at the ASF and Deng was elected as PMC Chair of Archiva. She is still currently serving as PMC Chair of the project and as PMC members of Continuum and Maven.

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ASP.NET 3.5 Application Architecture and Design

In Detail

Application architecture is an essential skill for ASP.NET developers. It is always tempting to jump in and start coding, but planning your architecture early in the project will leave you with a solid application that scales well, is easy to modify and extend, and saves you time and effort later on. As businesses struggle to control their costs, writing solid code that can be extended easily is becoming even more important.

This book takes a pragmatic approach to Application Architecture in ASP.NET 3.5. It presents a series of common architectural models, and shows how to select the best ones for your project and apply them.

The book begins by showing you how to use the main architectural models in your applications. You will see how to implement n-tier architectures, MVC, design patterns, and more. But this is no software engineering theory book – it is a practical, hands-on guide that shows you how to use these techniques in your software straight away. We then go on to build SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) applications with the Windows Communication Framework (WCF). Finally the book contains some essential guidance on effective database design, and a chapter on localizing your applications.

This book is a great way to learn ASP.NET Architecture in a practical, hands-on way. It will also serve as a quick reference for improving your application design.

What you will learn from this book

• Explore different architectural options while creating web solutions – tiers, layers, and logical structuring
• Master the concept of n-tier architecture and used design patterns in ASP.NET
• Implement the new ASP.NET MVC design in your applications
• Build an SOA application and see how WCF compliments it
• Design scalable and maintainable applications
• Deploy your localized applications and learn the best practices for your localization framework
• Learn better database design that can go with your application
• Explore best practices on how to globalize your commercial web applications

Chapter 1: Introduction to Architecture and Design. This chapter will introduce you to architecture and design in ASP.NET, including tiers, layers, and logical structuring.

Chapter 2: 1-Tier 1-Layer Architecture in ASP.NET. This chapter discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using the simplest and easiest 1-tier, 1-layer default architecture in ASP.NET. Readers will also understand when and why we should use out-of-the-box data source controls, and how 1-tier and 1-layer style is tightly coupled and not flexible or scalable.

Chapter 3: ER diagrams, Domain Model and n-Layer Architecture. This chapter discusses what an ER diagram is, the domain model, the basics of UML, what an n-layer design is, and how it increases flexibility and maintainability of the code compared to a 1-layer architecture. A sample project is explained with code in a 3-layer model. The drawbacks/limitations of this model are also discussed.

Chapter 4: N-Tier Architecture. This chapter talks about n-tier architecture in ASP.NET and how to implement it. It also explains the Data Transfer objects and how to use them, 4-tier and 5-tier web solutions.

Chapter 5: MVC Design and ASP.NET MVC Framework. In this chapter you will learn and understand what MVC design is and how ASP.NET MVC framework helps us quickly implement MVC design in our web applications.

Chapter 6: Design Patterns. In this chapter you will learn how and when to use the most common design patterns in ASP.NET: Factory, Dependency Injection, Singleton, and others.

Chapter 7: SOA and WCF. This chapter explains why we need SOA, explaining the advantages of SOA for a beginner. A sample project using SOA architecture is discussed. The chapter also teaches how the Windows Communication Framework compliments SOA.

Chapter 8: Best Practices in Database Design. This chapter deals with the importance of a well designed database, balanced normalization, logical and physical models, tips and tricks for better database models.

Chapter 9: Localization. This chapter covers localization for ASP.NET applications, deployment of localized applications, localization framework, and best practices.

Approach

This is a practical hands-on book with clear instructions and lot of code examples. It takes a simple approach, guiding you through different architectural topics using realistic sample projects.

A single project is implemented using different architectural styles to make the reader understand the details of each style. There are also many small independent code samples to explain design patterns, WCF, and localization.

Who this book is written for

This book is for people familiar with the ASP.NET framework using either C# or VB.NET. You don’t need to be an ASP.NET guru – the book is ideal for novice and intermediate developers.

If reading about application architecture usually confuses you or sends you to sleep, then this book will be perfect for you! In short, any ASP.NET programmer who is confused or disoriented reading different books or materials on architectures wondering how and what to implement in their application, will definitely benefit from this book!

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Beginning Ubuntu Linux, Fourth Edition

Beginning Ubuntu Linux, Fourth Edition

Beginning Ubuntu Linux, Fourth Edition is the update to the best–selling book on Ubuntu, today’s hottest Linux distribution. Targeting newcomers to Linux and to the Ubuntu distribution alike, readers are presented with an introduction to the world of Linux and open source community, followed by a detailed overview of Ubuntu’s installation and configuration process. From there readers learn how to wield total control over their newly installed operating system, and are guided through common tasks such as writing documents, listening to audio CDs and MP3s, watching movies, using VOIP and chat, and of course general system maintenance matters.

Additionally, there’s a series of comprehensive tutorials on Linux internals and the command–line prompt—essential for any Linux user—and the book includes special sections on optimization, security, and system maintenance.

The book comes with a DVD containing the complete Ubuntu Linux distribution. All you need to do is insert the DVD and follow the instructions in the book to install this distribution.

• The ultimate guide to Ubuntu, the hottest Linux distribution on the planet.
• Forgoes introductions to esoteric Linux topics so commonly found in other books and instead focuses on everyday tasks for everyday users: printer and file sharing configuration, office document management, and listening to MP3s and watching movies among them.

What you’ll learn

• Use Ubuntu as a daily desktop replacement.
• Complete all manner of office tasks, such as creating Microsoft Office–compatible documents and spreadsheets, using e–mail, and managing contacts.
• Listen to MP3s and CDs, and watch movies using a user–friendly Linux desktop.
• Configure Ubuntu’s printer– and file–sharing features to share resources seamlessly with other computers on your network.
• Become a proficient user of the Linux command line.

Who is this book for?

Beginning Linux users seeking to explore the popular Ubuntu distribution

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Hacking: The Next Generation

Description

With the advent of rich Internet applications, the explosion of social media, and the increased use of powerful cloud computing infrastructures, a new generation of attackers has added cunning new techniques to its arsenal. For anyone involved in defending an application or a network of systems, Hacking: The Next Generation is one of the few books to identify a variety of emerging attack vectors.

With the advent of rich Internet applications, the explosion of social media, and the increased use of powerful cloud computing infrastructures, a new generation of attackers has added cunning new techniques to its arsenal. For anyone involved in defending an application or a network of systems, Hacking: The Next Generation is one of the few books to identify a variety of emerging attack vectors.

You’ll not only find valuable information on new hacks that attempt to exploit technical flaws, you’ll also learn how attackers take advantage of individuals via social networking sites, and abuse vulnerabilities in wireless technologies and cloud infrastructures. Written by seasoned Internet security professionals, this book helps you understand the motives and psychology of hackers behind these attacks, enabling you to better prepare and defend against them.

• Learn how “inside out” techniques can poke holes into protected networks
• Understand the new wave of “blended threats” that take advantage of multiple application vulnerabilities to steal corporate data
• Recognize weaknesses in today’s powerful cloud infrastructures and how they can be exploited
• Prevent attacks against the mobile workforce and their devices containing valuable data
• Be aware of attacks via social networking sites to obtain confidential information from executives and their assistants
• Get case studies that show how several layers of vulnerabilities can be used to compromise multinational corporations

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