I'm sure I'm not the only one frustrated by the lack of support for the Open Document spreadsheet (ODS) format, and I'd be interested to know how many others would also like to see it. WebFOCUS still supports many long-dead output formats, but not one in use by perhaps 10 percent of computer users. I've had a new feature request in for a long time, but no action yet.

Anyway, after much dicking around, I've managed to find a formula that makes it possible to view the WebFOCUS Excel output in an Open Document spreadsheet format while preserving most of the styling. The only real issue is with headings, which get restricted to a single cell, and sometimes come out at outrageously large point sizes. However, these things can be fixed with a few mouse clicks (merge cells and re-size) leaving the report looking the same as it does in PDF format.

I have tried the following using OpenOffice (Novell edition)and Lotus Notes Symphony. I haven't tried it with LibreOffice.

The procedure is:

1) In the report code set ON TABLE SET HTMLCSS OFF

2) Save the report output in EXL97 and rename the WFServlet with a .XLS extension
(When using Symphony the .ODS extension also works, but OpenOffice will surprisingly create a nice table in Writer, not a spreadsheet)

3) Import the file into a spreadsheet. With Symphony it's important to use the Data-Import External Data command. File-Open does load the spreadsheet but it cannot subsequently be saved. With OpenOffice the procedure is File-Open followed by the Import Options dialogue.

4) Once the file is imported it's only necessary to do minor messing around to get the headings looking nice. This requires a lot fewer clicks with Symphony than with OpenOffice. Until recently Symphony was a poor cousin to OpenOffice, but IBM has made great strides with the user interface and it is now very slick and has become my preferred Open Document program.

All I need now is for IBI to natively support the ODS format so all of this becomes unnecessary .....

I too would like to see native support for Open Office/LibreOffice in WebFOCUS.

I can't think of a better way for Information Builders to give back to the open source community (and provide a bonus in customer focus) than support Open Document format. Given the large number of open source tools being used by IBI as displayed in the "3rd Party License Information" on the ibi_apps/ homepage, it would be appropriate to contribute back to the community.

(Especially when you're saving $$ by bundling Apache Tomcat with your software

Dan in Omaha

Wow George. Glad you came up with something but that still seems to be an enormous amount of screwing around. I feel your pain though. I wouldn't want to do that and I can assure you that our users would never consent to such a series of steps for a number of reasons.

I too wish that IB would resolve this as we have been forced to install MS Office for casual users due to the lack of support for OpenOffice formats. I did bring this up at Summit 2010 and they acknowledged it not working but it appears to not be on the radar whatsoever.

Norb

Norb: My assumption is that the only reason my users would want a report in spreadsheet format to begin with is so they can mess around with the data. That means they plan do do some clicking here and there anyway. They will also always save the report and most likely open it again later. So to my mind there isn't much difference between saving the report first and then viewing it versus viewing it immediately in Excel and saving it afterwards.

The hassle part comes with the import into the Open Document spreadsheet. This does require 3 clicks for OpenOffice and 6 for Symphony, followed by a couple to get the headings looking nice - which takes aout 30 seconds total. Assuming my users will then spend some minutes actually messing around with the reports I pesonally don't think this is too terrible - although they don't like it of course because it requires them to actually think.

I've spoken to IBI about Open Document integration and they keep telling me that I'm the only one who wants it. So it's important for folks on Focal Point [all of you!] to put in a new feature request to let them know there is interest out there. Not all of us work for Fortune 500 companies so for me saving $280 x 30 users for the cost of MS Office is significant. Heck - that's a big chunk of our annual maintenance fee to IBI.

Good news .. IBI informed me yesterday that several customers have asked for open document format support. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, so I'd be very grateful if you other focal pointers out there would also support this campaign by putting in an NFR - even if you don't plan to use .ODS yourselves.

Hello "Squeaky"!!!

That's interesting news. I will put in an NFR for Open Document Format support. Of course, it may be quite some time before this happens but I'll keep "squeaking" along with you and others until I'm satisfactorily greased.

Norb

Again, I think that it's important for Information Builders' image not to be perceived as a "leech", using open source tools internally and bundling them externally, and NOT CONTRIBUTING BACK TO THE OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY.

For all the company PR that is engineered using facebook, twitter, etc., IBI is ignoring this blight on its image.

Support for OPEN DOCUMENT FORMAT would go a long way to erasing this perception.

Dan in Omaha
Higher Education Customer

The issue is very simple.

There is not a big enough US user base that demands it.

Although Open Document format is a very good idea they have the same problems as the different flavors of Web Browser.

There are standards but each implementer does things slightly differently.

Which specific flavor of Open Documents should IBI support?

Well, IBI supports a wide variety of Excel formats plus some long-dead ones. Those of us in the Open Document community would be happy if IBI would support the open document format v1.2 as approved by OASIS, which addresses the standard formula format issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

I note in that article: "NATO with its 26 members uses ODF as a mandatory standard for all members".... So "not enough demand" is hardly a convincing argument.

To JGs point, MS Office has become the lingua franca for business documents. As an enterprise business user, you wouldn't suggest the company run on LibreOffice any more than you would suggest they run mission critical Data Stores in MySQL or provide company email via Gmail or Hotmail.

To George Patton's point, businesses every where have a toe in the water to see just how capable this Free, Open Source stuff is. If it's good enough to for IBI to build the majority of their product offering off of, it can't be that bad. Oracle now owns OpenOffice and MySQL, etc.

In my own IS environment we use GroupWise because Exchange/Outlook is more than our entire yearly budget. We are investigating branching our software stack to a basic and premium version (guess what: Basic is LibreOffice, Premium is MS Office among other things).

Bottom line is, budgets are challenging and alternatives that were not very attractive 10 years ago in the boom times now look a bit more capable (especially to those writing checks).

Bottom BOTTOM line is, IBI will not just add in this capability to be Johnny Goodguy to the Open Source community. They will have to hear from their user base that this is a need. Moreover, they will have to hear from their user base about how they will have to move off the IBI platform because their office infrastructure is changing to a platform IBI doesn't support.



+1 on the irony that there is all the open source stuff comprising the product but it doesn't play well with open source tools. ;-)

- ABT

quote:

To JGs point, MS Office has become the lingua franca for business documents. As an enterprise business user, you wouldn't suggest the company run on LibreOffice any more than you would suggest they run mission critical Data Stores in MySQL or provide company email via Gmail or Hotmail.

I'm not sure what the definition of "enterprise business" is, but we run our 30-person business on OpenOffice and are switching to Lotus Symphony in 3 weeks now that the new version has finally caught up to OpenOffice. Symphony is integrated with the current version of Lotus Notes which we have been using for 15 years.

Every time we hire a new person they jump up and down and complain that we don't supply them with Excel. They moan and scream, but it gets them nowhere. (Of course they could have it if they forgo a month's salary - the cost to equip the entire office with Excel - but no-one has jumped at that offer yet). Eventually they learn that the tools we provide are perfectly adequate.

Rigel is in the education sector, which is a large consumer of IBI products. And MySQL is, to the best of my knowledge, a perfectly capable RDBMS. We run all our servers on Linux, which just a few years ago was considered Mickey Mouse, but is now about as mainstream as you can get. I'm predicting that open document format will be the mainstream in the next 5 years.

PS: I'm guessing large chunks of IBM (surely an "enterprise business")run on Symphony, their own product.

quote:

I'm not sure what the definition of "enterprise business" is, but we run our 30-person business

Please don't take this the wrong way, but my definition of enterprise business would not be 30 users.

quote:

I'm guessing large chunks of IBM (surely an "enterprise business")run on Symphony, their own product.

I wouldn't be so sure. I worked for Big Blue for a few years and only encountered Lotus Smart Suite a few times (around 1998-2000) and even then those people were basically made fun of. Internally. MS Office was the de facto. Last I heard, they were piloting Symphony and other OOO variants internally. Piloting. From the company that *makes* it. Same with the Linux Desktop. Around the time of the SCO vs. the world debacle (?2002,3,4?) I was very heavy into the internal Linux Desktop alternative program and it was going nowhere fast. Windows XP was the norm and anything else was a curious oddity. About the only thing I've seen really pushed in an 'eat your own dogfood' kind of a way was Lotus Notes and WebSphere (and later, Rational shortly after the acquisition).

Don't get me wrong, I'm as Linux as they come. First install on Red Hat 5.2 in 1998 and the only OS I've let into my house since 2004. I've seen *so many* year of the desktop and corporate 'desktop alternative' projects come and go that I've been desensitized to it. Come to find out, you get a big break from MS on licensing when you start 'investigating' desktop alternatives.

I guess being so close and so hopeful for so long has really only yielded me a closer look at how things like this really work. Call it jaded, I'm not sure. Maybe I'm just realistic or knowledgeable to the way businesses work.

That said, press forward with the NFRs. Things like this only get places with noise and pestering. I myself need it to work with LibreOffice to support the aforementioned Alternative software stack implementation that may (or may not) go anywhere...

- ABT