JasperReports modernisation and replacement

Split down the middle. The JasperReports Library, the part that fills a .jrxml template with data and produces the PDF, is still open source under the LGPL, still maintained, and on version 7. Jaspersoft Studio, the designer, is still free.

JasperReports Server is a different story. The web application that holds the report repository, schedules the overnight runs and lets users run reports themselves lost its community edition on 25 January 2024. The downloads were withdrawn, an existing install keeps running but is no longer maintained, and there are no fixes for security vulnerabilities. The commercial edition continues, and support for the 8.0.x line ended on 31 December 2024. The company behind it has changed hands three times, to TIBCO in 2014, to Cloud Software Group in 2022 and to HCLSoftware in July 2026.

Version 7 of the library moved the ground as well. It needs Java 17, and templates saved by version 6 or older can't be loaded by version 7 on its own; they have to be converted in Jaspersoft Studio 7 first. A system on Java 8 with a folder of old .jrxml files has more than a library upgrade in front of it.

In Java business systems, mostly, and in a lot of PHP ones. Spring and JSF applications from the 2000s and 2010s with a reports package that calls the library. PHP systems that start a Java process to render invoices and statements. ERPs and customer portals a supplier built and left. The odd Oracle APEX install.

In each case the .jrxml templates hold the invoice, the statement, the picking list, the month-end pack, and often the rules for what goes on them: an expression that works out the discount, a subreport that reads a table the application forgot, a scriptlet nobody has opened since it was written. The templates were designed in iReport, the older designer Jaspersoft retired in 2015, or in Jaspersoft Studio, and the person who designed them has usually gone.

1. Inventory. Every .jrxml and compiled .jasper file, where it's called from, who runs it and how often. On a JasperReports Server install, the repository and the schedules tell most of it. Half are usually dead. The ones that remain are the specification.
2. Extract what each report does. The query or the stored procedure, the parameters, the expressions and scriptlets, the grouping and totals, the subreports, the layout. Written down as a description, so the rules survive whatever happens to the template.
3. Choose the route. Upgrade the library in place where the application is staying on Java, converting the templates in Jaspersoft Studio 7 as part of the upgrade. Replace the community edition server with scheduling and a report library inside the application. Rebuild the reports on the modernised system's reporting layer where the application is leaving Java or PHP. Often a mix.
4. Move or rebuild each report and run it side by side with the old one on the same data. Totals, row counts, and the layout the customer recognises on an invoice. A report doesn't switch until it matches.
5. Retire what's left when the last schedule has moved: the unmaintained server, the old Java runtime, the shell-out from PHP.

Each report is a small stage of its own, which is why the work can be priced as a fixed number and done in the order the business cares about.

Keep it where the application is staying on Java; replace it where the application is leaving.

The library is maintained, free and good at what it does, so a Java system that is being modernised in place keeps it: upgrade to version 7, convert the templates, move the scheduling out of the withdrawn server and into the application. That is a contained piece of work with a known end.

Where the application is being rebuilt on something else, the templates are a specification rather than a dependency. Each report is rebuilt on the new system's reporting layer, and the library goes with the old application when the old application goes.

The community edition server is the one thing that doesn't stay in either case. Unmaintained software that holds the report repository and the database credentials for it is the first thing to move.

Untouched. Reports read; they don't change anything. The upgraded or rebuilt reports run against the same database as the old ones, side by side, until each matches. Where the new reporting layer needs views or a reporting database of its own, they are built and tested on a copy, then in staging alongside live, before anything connects to the live server.

The assessment is from £395 + VAT, sized on a free one-hour consultation, with an exact price before you commit. For JasperReports it inventories the templates and any server install, identifies which reports are alive, extracts what a sample of them do, checks the Java version and the template versions against what version 7 needs, and prices the work report by report as fixed numbers. What drives the price and the payment terms each have a page.

An unmaintained JasperReports Server holding the report repository and a database login, reachable from the office network or wider. A Java 8 runtime that a hosting or security change will retire, taking the reports with it. Templates from version 6 that won't load after a well-meant library upgrade. And the rules that live only in report expressions being lost in a modernisation that didn't inventory them.

Inventory first, then match every report before switching it. Reporting layers are where we start on most takeovers, because the outputs are the part of the system the business can check line by line. Everything we build runs on open, widely used technology, in your own accounts, with full source code and ownership transferring to you on final payment.