PDF Report Creation - Servlet Web Interface API

Web-based reporting uses a web browser as the client viewer, presenting reports in either HTML or PDF format. InetSoft enterprise products provide a complete solution using a mix of DHTML and PDF output. For purely static reports, it is possible to use PDF as the only presentation media. This is supported by a built-in servlet in the InetSoft package.

Example of PDF Report Created with a Servlet

View the gallery of interactive reports

PDF Servlet - also Excel and HTML generation

The PDFService class supports web PDF, Excel and HTML generation. PDFService is a servlet based on standard servlet API. It can be deployed in any Servlet 2.0 compatible web server or servlet engine. By using the PDF servlet, an application can provide web based reporting without any programming effort.

The PDF servlet can execute any report template produced using the Report Designer and can generate PDF and HTML output from the executed reports. File generation is performed in the background using background Java threads. Therefore, it is capable of handling multiple simultaneous requests and is not restrained by browser time-out when executing large reports.

The flow of the PDF servlet is as follows:

Browser sends a request to the servlet using a URL encoded with the template file name and possible query parameters.
The servlet initiates a background thread to execute the report template and generate a PDF or HTML file.
A DHTML page is generated by the servlet to display the status of the report generation. The DHTML periodically checks the servlet to see if the processing is complete.
If the PDF or HTML output is generated successfully, the output is returned to the browser. The PDF file is presented using Acrobat Reader.
If an error occurs in the processing, the error is reported on the browser.