When comparing ReportServer vs Jasper Reports, the Slant community recommends Jasper Reports for most people. In the question“What are the best open source reporting tools?” Jasper Reports is ranked 2nd while ReportServer is ranked 10th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Active community
Questions on the community forum are usually answered very quickly. Developers are active there.
Pro Easy to use dashboards
Integrates user centric Dashboard components that allows for easy set up of Dashboards that highlighting the most important KPIs and reports.
Pro Powerful scheduler
ReportServer has a powerful built-in scheduler to run reports at recurring intervals. Custom scheduler targets (e.g. webservices or SFTP uploads) can be specified via scripting.
Pro Cross platform and web-based
ReportServer is a Java web application and can thus be installed on any OS supporting java. Being a web-app allows access to it from anywhere without the need to install additional client software
Pro Enterprise version with support available
Besides the open source version, there is also the commercial ReportServer Enterprise edition which adds additional functionality, in particular, support for scripting and Crystal.
Pro Provides intuitive ad-hoc reporting component
ReportServer's Dynamic List provides a very intuitive, yet powerful ad-hoc reporting component.
Pro Supports multiple reorting engines including JasperReports and Eclipse BIRT
ReportServer integrates several reporting engines including the popular JasperReports, Eclipse BIRT and Crystal.
Pro Has many more output formats than Nextreports
Pro Easy to learn
Pro Eclipse-based report designer is fairly easy to use
Jasperstudio report designer is easy enough to grok. It is full of features for designing your reports in a wysiwyg manner.
Pro Can be run as a service (server version) that allows deep links to individual reports or embedded with your web app as a library
You may or may not want a server version with its own learning curve and API. With Jasper you have the option of server vs library. With either one you can whip up reports and make them available in PDF, XML, HTML, CSV, XLS, RTF or TXT format. It's not very difficult to do that with JasperReports. And there are many examples out there to learn from.
Cons
Con Geared towards Java programmers
Extremely slow to load