Suggestions For A Reporting System

Question

Hi,
I'm currently working a nefty Swing application and was looking for ideas as to how to develop a robust, extensible reporting system. I would appreciate any all suggestions to make the whole system work as efficiently as possible, with little difficulties when it comes to adding new reports and all.
Basically is here the structure I'm currently using:
1. I have an abstract class called ReportNode which has the following basic structure:
public abstract class ReportNode  {
     * Returns a List of Person objects which will be used to create the Report. This is the only
     * required method needs to be implemented by the report node subclasses. All other methods can be
     * overridden as required.
     * @return the List of Person objects to use for the report
    public abstract List<MemberData> getNodeData();
     * Returns a TableModel with the data to be displayed
     * @return a TableModel with the data to be displayed
    public TableModel getNodeDataModel() {
        return new DefaultTableModel();
    // with several other methods which can be overriden and as necessary
}2. Each report is currently hard coded by extending the ReportNode object and overriding either one of the two methods stated to retrieve the required information which can then be displayed in a JTable, using a predefined TableModel (for the first method) or a the custom TableModel returned from the second.
Now I want to move the code out the hard coded format since the reports are growing and I would like suggestions or pointers on some best practices that can help me get the results I need. That is, suggestions as to
- what type of database structure can be set up that can make generating custom reports possible
- or perhaps I should go with Stored Procedures instead and come with some table design that can be used to pick the required variables for the procedures
- should I stick with the JTable reporting (works quite well for data presentation, but can be tricky when it comes to printing at times)
- or I should switch completely to some of the standard reporting systems like Jasper Reports (I tried it but found it a bit cumbersome for a beginner)
Any suggestions (however small) would be greatly appreciated.
ICE

Answer 1

MGE certainly has a decent track record. Search the net for reviews of Liebert’s line as well.