DevEx with Jaspersoft: Where the developer calls all the shots

When you're a bona fide developer, a basic BI platform with a friendly UI and plenty of drag-and-drop fluff is nothing short of underwhelming. Instead, you want a real, indulging development experience that makes the most of your technical chops and truly empowers end users. You want power, control, CLI support, extensibility, and everything else that makes creating reports and visualizations worthwhile.

That, right there, is Jaspersoft’s strength. Built for developers, with developers, by developers, our platform places you at the center of the developer experience (DevEx). Here’s how.

The three ways to build a report

It’s never a “choose one and suffer” situation when creating reports in Jaspersoft. No matter your skill level, stack preference, or unique development goals, Jaspersoft has something for you. All three of our platform offerings are as scalable as they are versatile.

• Jaspersoft Studio: Built for developers needing full control over their reporting environment, this Java-based desktop designer is where pixel-perfect, enterprise-grade reporting comes to life.  It is one of the most sophisticated components in the Jaspersoft universe, but its capabilities far outweigh the complexity for those who value precision and flexibility. Building happens locally, making it ideal for integrating into existing workflows, version control systems, or CI/CD pipelines. Once designed, reports can be seamlessly embedded or uploaded to the server via API or through the intuitive web UI. 

• Web Studio: Inherently browser-based, Web Studio is a modern report designer that runs alongside the JasperReports Server. Think of it as a powerful midpoint between the built-in server UI and full-on Studio. What makes it a sweet spot for most developers is that it’s lightweight but still solid and dependable.

• JasperReports Server UI: This out-of-the-box web interface gives admins the ability to centrally manage reporting and offers end users ad hoc self-service capabilities, scheduling, and alerting. It can serve up value for those who’d rather prioritize quick insights and allows drill-down for a deep-dive analysis. 

Whether you’re bootstrapping dashboards in Web Studio or designing legislative-grade tax forms in Studio, Jaspersoft is a developer’s paradise. We’ll let you choose your reporting weapon, without compromise.

Embedded AND customized, just the way you like it

Prefer to embed analytics into a React or Angular app rather than writing heaps of custom code for every single visualization or report? Jaspersoft Visualize.js is where it’s at. Want to brand the report portal per user or per tenant? Easy.

With Jaspersoft, gaining full control of your development journey is truly easy and straightforward. All thanks to full white-label support, custom authentication flows (OAuth1, OAuth2, SAML, LDAP), and multi-tenant architecture.

Consider this. A developer recently called on Jaspersoft’s flexible architecture to dynamically restrict data access based on user profiles stored in a database. So every time a report runs, Jaspersoft appends a context-aware WHERE clause based on the user’s role. The result? Karen, a regular user, only gets to see IDs 1,2,3, while Fred, the manager, gets to see 1-500. It’s the kind of access control that scales without unnecessary spaghetti code.

Built-in multi-tenancy: The rare, invaluable feature you’ll want to use

When you’re serving multiple departments, clients, or franchises, count on Jaspersoft’s multi-tenancy prowess to simplify and secure data management and content dissemination. And because it’s a native-feature and not a bolt-on, you operate from right within the Jaspersoft software — zero complex workarounds required.

To break it down further, each sub-organization in this setup operates as a logically isolated environment with separate users, roles, data sources, and even reports. All while allowing for centralized management of assets at the parent level. A win-win.

Take a university, for example. It could define separate sub-orgs for its math, language, and biology departments, each with its own data and dashboards. No more duct-tapping database logic or constantly altering the UI to keep tenants siloed.

Is AI built in? Not yet, but we’re getting there

Jaspersoft might not be shipping its own AI-powered report generator yet, but it’s no longer a question of “if" it will happen. Rather, it’s when it’ll happen. And the answer is: Pretty soon! 

In the meantime, developers are already successfully using ChatGPT and Gemini to write .jrxml templates. It’s unofficial, but it works all the way. 

The big question is: How far are you from AI-assisted reporting? Well, if you’ve got the dev chops and a little prompt engineering, it’s safe to say you’re approaching AI territory, fast.

Soon enough, we’ll be adding deeper AI integrations into our core offering. Stay in the know through our road ahead segment.

Dev support that never ghosts you

Developers might be incredibly smart, but even they need support every now and then. In Jaspersoft’s universe, support is always present — whenever, however you want it.

• Jaspersoft Community: All the information, resources, and guidance you’ll need to be successful with Jaspersoft is available here. At absolutely no cost to you. 

• Stack Overflow and Active Forums: If you ever run into a nagging issue, chances are high someone else has investigated it, solved it, and sought optimizations for it. Your work just got easier.

• Helpdesk Tickets and Escalations: For when you can’t readily find answers in public forums, our helpdesk is here to assist.

• Customer Success Architects: How does a developer helping a developer sound? Jaspersoft has a few of them, with the wealth of experience and depth of knowledge you’ll want to have in your corner. 

Dashboards, charting, and scheduling at your fingertips

The modern developer detests the constant headache that comes with hand-coding scheduling logic or building custom chart libraries from scratch. With Jaspersoft, they never have to.

Do executives want you to send daily PDFs? Done. Jaspersoft has built-in scheduling, email delivery, and S3 export. Perhaps you want to let a client access a secure dashboard? Generate a link, or better yet, embed it with tenant-aware access baked in.

Even visualization is fuss-free in Jaspersoft. You’ll get access to nearly three dozen chart types out of the box, including pie, bar, line, area, cross-tab, and even 3D variants, with Highcharts integration for more. And if you need to go beyond, our platform is endlessly extensible. The benefit is indisputable: less time spent on chart config or D3 and more time focused on actual product logic.

Jaspersoft security: We never, ever take it for granted

OAuth 2.0? Check. SAML 2.0 and LDAP? Double check. Role-based access and row-level filtering? That’s our bread and butter.

At Jaspersoft, the security features we offer are built into the core engine and are inherently configuration-driven. For teams in industries needing ADA compliance, we’ve recently conducted a UI overhaul with the sole goal of adequately meeting WCAG standards. With our platform, staying aligned with accessibility requirements has never been easier.

Final thoughts: Jaspersoft is built for you

Developers need to be treated like the first-class citizens that they are. We’ve always done that at Jaspersoft, and we won’t stop anytime soon.

Yes, our platform is modern, but that’s not why you should make the shift. Think of how modular, open, extensible, and developer-mindful it is. All of these features make your life easier and make the shift to Jaspersoft a no-brainer. 

Go ahead. Automate those 53-million-page monsters, build multi-tenant portals, embed analytics and visualizations into your native apps. And do it with a tool that honors your craft. 

Give Jaspersoft a try today.

Related Resources