GTD Excel Report Builder/Server

Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are ubiquitous in today's business environment.

GTD Excel Report Server is web-based reporting solution that helps small and mid-sized businesses create, manage, and deliver rich-format excel reports via the web or embedded in enterprise applications.

Excel Report Sample

Sample1.xls

Sample2.xls

Get rich format spreadsheet from database

Here is an overview of how you can generate excel report with GTD Server.

Create a "report template" defining the structure and data of your report, feed it into your GTD server. And then you can export data into excel file. Using the Scheduler it is possible to set up automatic report generation and have the reports be sent by email.

It can be run as a stand-alone server.

Features

GTD Excel Report Server is a flexible and powerful reporting solution for many different purposes. You can use a lot of report features to make your reports useful, clear and meaningful.

Platform Independent with multiple Environments

GTD server is completely written in Java. It runs on every platform (OS) that supports Java 5 or higher (e.g. Windows, Unix, Solaris, OSX 10.4+, AIX). A GUI is not requiered for the server.

Remote Interface

The Remote Interface is the most convenient way for administrators to configure the server when a direct access to the server is impossible. The administrator is able to control the server by web browser, even shutdown the server.

Database independent

The data for the reports can be fetched from any JDBC data source. Note that there are JDBC drivers available for all major databases such as MySQL, MS SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and so on. Many drivers are already included with GTD server.

You can change the database at runtime or design time.

Visual Report Template Designer

GTD server provide predefined report layout, you can edit the format of cells by visual designer. If you use Excel-based template, you can edit the template by Microsoft-Excel program.

Rich format excel

• The use of different fonts, sizes, styles and colours is fully supported, just as it is under Excel.
• Independent from MS Excel runtime, no excel template required.

Dynamic Reports

The reports can be customize with parameters. Parameter can be set via URL or by the user at run-time.

Report Permissions

• There are many options to limit the visibility of reports.
• Integrate with LDAP, so you can login GTD sever using your account in Active Directory and other LDAP server.

Scheduler

You can create reports with an execution time plan and send them via email.

Multi-Language Reports

A single report can be available for different languages (labels and formating).

Rapid Development

• We provide several common predefined report layout, so you can develop report in minutes. No technical knowledge is needed in order for the user to customize his or her own reports
• You can also develop complex excel template based report, however, it may take more time.

Other Features

• can produce many different output formats (Excel, CVS, HTML)
• can be integrated in many application and web servers, It is possible to call the Excel Report Server from other programs

Download

You can download and try the free trial version of GTD Excel Report Server from the link below

Download Now

License

GTD Report Server is free software

This product includes third party components: Tomcat/Struts/Common Logging/Log4j/HSSF/JXLS/Commons-Collections/Commons-Digester/Commons-Jexl/Commons-Beanutils/JDOM/JDBC Drivers of Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL/Java Service Wrapper

Try the GTD server online

We install GTD server on one of our server that is hosted in Fremont. You can login in the server and experience the server.

http://www.gtdreport.com:8002/

Please don't remove/change any object that is not created by you, thank you for your cooperation.

We have created a table for your testing.

create table salesrecord (
 productName varchar(100),
 productLine varchar(100),
 customerName varchar(100),
 quantity int,
 MSRP DECIMAL(10,2),
 buyPrice DECIMAL(10,2),
 orderDate date
);

Experience it now (7 minutes)

Although you can experience the GTD server that is running in Fremont, however, I strongly suggest you to download and run the server on your PC. If you are using Windows OS, it is very easy. Please follow the steps below.

1. Download self-extractive file of GTD Server with JRE included, click Here to download. -- 3 minutes
2. Run the self-extractive file, extract the installation pack to a folder. --0.5 minute
3. Double click startup.bat, start the server. --0.5 minute
4. Open IE browser, visit http://localhost:8002/ , login as admin. --0.5 minute
5. Create the first connection pool. --1 minute
6. Create the first simple report. -- 1.5 minutes
7. Run the first report, get rich-formated excel output.

Live demo of step 2-4 is available, please click here and see.

Note: If you want to uninstall, just remove the folder created at step 2.

Architecture of GTD Report Solution

The Java based Reports Server enables you to run reports using a multi-tiered architecture. This means that you can submit a report request from a client machine to run on a high-performance server machine, while accessing data from a separate database server.

The Java based Reports Server supports on-demand delivery from a "thin" client. When used in conjunction with the Reports Web Cartridge, Web CGI, or Servlet, you can dynamically run reports from a Web browser using standard URL syntax.

About GTD Excel Report Server

GTD is the shorthand for "Getting Things Done".

History

In order to save IT budget, some companies don’t buy professional reporting tools like Oracle Reports, and the programmers spend a long time on duplicated works when they develop reports for the users. What is more, some reporting program is deployed with core business system, so the reporting program always occupies too much resource and influence the performance of core system. In order to solve the problem, I decided to build a light weight and stand-alone report server.

The GTD Excel Report Server (hereafter GTD Server) project was started in 2008. It is intended to meet fast developing requirement.

Integration

The GTD Server is based on Struts framework, it invoke Apache POI to output report in excel format. It is web-based application; users can access it through browser. Although it is a light weight server, however, it integrates with a lot of elements of enterprise application.

There are two distribution of GTD Server.

• Stand-alone Application.
• WAR Package

The stand-alone application distribution is intended for newbie. It contains Tomcat and GTD Server. If you want to install GTD Server on Windows platform, just download the installation package, unzip the package, double click the startup.bat, and then server is launched. It is also simple even though it is running on non-Windows platform. You can also install GTD Server as Windows service or Linux daemon.

The WAR package distribution is intended for advanced users. You can deploy it in your J2ee Container such as Weblogic. The GTD Server will share the security and data source configuration of the container.

Authentication & Authorization

Authentication:
There are 3 types of authenticators

• GTD Server
• LDAP Server
• Container

Authorization:
The GTD Server defines 3 types of users.

• Administrator
• Developer
• User

You can also define your customized roles and grant report to the roles. The user can access the reports only if he is granted corresponding role.

SSO:
You can configure the WAR distribution to support SSO (Single Sign On).

Integrate with your application.

• Your application can contribute the URL link to GTD Server, and the users can get the report by the URL.
• Your application can also send request to GTD Server, and the report output is sent to inbox of specified email address.

Data Source

The GTD Server can also access data source registered in the container by JNDI.

Logging & Exception Handling

The GTD Server embedded Log4j and common logging. All important action and exception stack is logged to the file. Some exception stack may be printed in web page; this information is helpful for the user to report the bug.

Report Engine

Design Report
The GTD Server supports 2 types of report engine, as well as supports 2 types of report design method.

1) Design report via web page.
You can design the data model and display model by web GUI interface.

Data Model
Data Model includes data source, sql statement, parameter, grouping, subtotal etc. The data source and parameter is bound on report runtime. The GTD Server supports sql statement parsing.

Display Model.
The display model includes layout, font, color, format, alignment etc.

2) Design report via template.
You can create an excel template, on which define data model (supports multiple sql statement) and display model. You can design complex display model, even the graph.

Invoke Report
The user can run report via browser and schedule.

Support

Feedback, questions and bug reports are welcome and should be sent to the customer support, at support@gtdreport.com.

It is appreciated if you write a review of GTD Excel Report Server and send it to us by email to support@gtdreport.com.