Dynamically Generating a Pentaho Cross Tab Report, Part 1

We recently received a monster (in a great way!!) of a tech tip from Nic Guzaldo, a self-taught Pentaho expert and supporter. I spent a day or so getting my head around what Nic had accomplished (with many exclamations of "wow, I didn't know we could do THAT!"), and figured I should break it up into a series of articles for easier consumption.

This first article of the series focuses on creating a query that will not only demonstrate setting up regular data for a cross tab report, but also use user input to determine the number of columns in the query.

In the second half of this solution, we will continue with Nic's example and use the generated resultset as input to a dynamically generated report spec, to create a Pentaho report that allows a variable number of columns, dynamically generated report name, nice output names for external files and other goodies!

Start test driving this jam-packed solution at here.