>>>Anyone have any insight on how to convert foxpro reports to jaspersoft?
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>>I am doing reporting using Jaspersoft in our VFP application, but I think converting the report design would be a very difficult task. It depends of course how complex those reports are, but it may as well take the same time to create them from scratch.
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>Any thought on Jaspersoft. We are just starting.

We are using Jaspersoft reports in a legacy app that still uses VFP tables, and we enable the users to design or create their own report layout. The data is being prepared and output into XML for JasperSoft to consume, which in itself can be a slow process, when working with very large data sets.

JaspersoftStudio is pretty good for designing the reports, but it is not flawless. It has a few issues, like for instance alignment of objects. There is no alignment tool as we know it from our Foxpro report designer. But when working with it you get quickly used it. Working with Lists is often too much to ask for an end-user, so we usually help them with the more complex reports.

There are a lot of powerful options, for instance you can decide for each field, at what time the content is being evaluated (evaluation time), something we missed in the VFP reports. When starting be sure to first learn about the use of styles and templates, not to set style properties for each object separately. It was also a good idea to create standard variables that are common in all reports.

If the datasource would be SQLServer I would probably prefer SSRS, because JasperSoft feels more like a niche product. (Probably for this reason it is often hard to impossible to find useful information on the web when you encounter a problem).