erpnext_admin_guide

21.4 Installation of BI Development Environment

Most people code in the Eclipse IDE. The admin guide recommends that coding of reports also occur in the Eclipse IDE. These are the reasons:

• The native Jasper Reports Studio that you download from the JasperSoft web site is a repackaged Eclipse IDE with only a single module enabled.
• By using a generic installation of the Eclipse IDE you can not only download and install the Jasper Reports Studio, but also modules to support giving back to the ERPNext community and to this administrator’s guide.

Start by downloading the archive file (zip or tar.gz) of the “Eclipse IDE for JavaScript and Web Developers” from this web site: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/release/Neon/3.

NOTE: Eclipse Neon is not the latest version of the Eclipse IDE. However, at this time the JasperReports Studio module only supports Neon (v4.6) and not the latest Oxygen (v4.7) release. See the release notes. Notice the bullet item “RCP version is now based on Eclipse 4.6.3 platform”. When a future release comes out that supports RCP 4.7.x, then we can upgrade to Eclipse Oxygen.

Once you have downloaded the IDE software compressed archive. Uncompress it to a directory of your choice. The admin guide recommends something simple like C:\tools\eclipse-4.6-neon for Windows machines or ~/tools/eclipse-4.6-neon on MacOS or Linux.

When finished, open the IDE:

• Windows - run eclipse.exe
• MacOS - run Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse
• Linux - run eclipse/eclipse

From the Welcome page, click to Launch the Eclipse Marketplace. Find and install the following:

• Jaspersoft Studio
• EGit - Git Integration for Eclipse 4.6.0
• GitHub Flavored Markdown Viewer
• GitHub Extensions
• Markdown Text Editor
• PyDev - Python IDE for Eclipse
• Data Tools Platform

After a restart of Eclipse, you will need to get the MariaDB Java jar files for the database client. Go to this website – https://downloads.mariadb.org/connector-java/ and download the latest stable files. Drop them to a known good location such as the root directory of your installation.

Open the driver configuration

Window > Preferences > Data Management > Connectivity > Driver Definition

Click Add, Pick MySQL JDBC Driver (any version). Click on the Jar List tab. Add the mariadb-java-client-[x].[y].[z].jar and mariadb-java-client-[x].[y].[z]-javadoc.jar files to the list. Remove any out of the box mysql.jar references. Click on the Properties tab. Change Connection URL to jdbc:mysql://[server]:3306/[database], change Database Name to [database], change Driver Class to org.mariadb.jdbc.Driver, and change User ID to `[user]. Click OK to Save.

Now you are ready to create a connection to the server for reporting.

Open the report design perspective.

Window > Perspective > Open Perspective > Other

Select “Report Design” from the list of perspectives.

Now you are ready to build some reports! Read the documentation online.