# Heavy reports with a lot of calculations

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/heavy-reports-with-a-lot-of-calculations/176967>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 9, 2009, 5:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/heavy-reports-with-a-lot-of-calculations/176967 "2009-10-09T05:10:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Goin\_T](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/779978/32.png) [@Goin\_T](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Goin_T)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 5:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/heavy-reports-with-a-lot-of-calculations/176967/1 "2009-10-09T05:10:31Z")

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Hello,

I am working on reports now where we are using MySQL (InnoDB) and Rails  
2.3.4.

Tables are big and there are a lot of calculation with several big  
tables.  
Please give me some suggestions whether there any gem, plugin, articles,  
or  
techniques that allows me to create heavy reports.

I am even going to use cron job that allows me to calculate some middle  
data  
in order to provide heavy reports more faster to end users.

Also I am interesting whether anybody has an experience with  
JasperReport.  
What are benefits and disadvantages of using it?

Regards,  
Olga

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**Author:** ![Goin\_T](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/779978/32.png) [@Goin\_T](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Goin_T)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 7:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/heavy-reports-with-a-lot-of-calculations/176967/2 "2009-10-09T07:53:51Z")

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Hi Goin T.

```
In our project we use for generating excel reports the gem 

```

‘spreadsheet’  
[http://rubyforge.org/projects/spreadsheet/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/spreadsheet/)

For pdf reports we use the gem ‘prawn’  
[http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com/](http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com/)

Sijo

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Goin\_T](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/779978/32.png) [@Goin\_T](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Goin_T)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/heavy-reports-with-a-lot-of-calculations/176967/3 "2009-10-09T15:21:02Z")

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Hello,

On Oct 8, 9:58 pm, Goin T. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Tables are big and there are a lot of calculation with several big tables.  
> Please give me some suggestions whether there any gem, plugin, articles, or  
> techniques that allows me to create heavy reports.

I’ve been using Ruby Reports ([http://rubyreports.org/](http://rubyreports.org/)) and have been  
very happy with it. It’s geared specifically towards generating  
reports, so it provides a data manipulation functions (sum row, add  
column, etc) in addition to formatting. It also has AR integration  
through the acts\_as\_reportable gem.

Sean