Ad Hoc Reporting Tools

Reporting tools are applications that are used to analyze, report and present data in a better way. This may run as stand alone tool and can be integrated with any system.

Here are few ad hoc reporting tools that i have found amazing. These provide easy integration with your data and wizard base approach to build reports at design time. You are not supposed to be a professional software or database engineer to use these tools, but with a normal knowledge of your system and database you may handle it comfortably.

Izenda

http://www.izenda.com/Site/index.aspx

-------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------

DBxtra

http://www.dbxtra.com/

If you are looking for some open source solution, please take a look

http://binarymyth.blogspot.com/2010/06/reporting-tools-open-source.html

Reporting Tools (Open Source)

Reporting tools are applications that are used to analyze, report and present data in a better way. This may run as stand alone tool and can be integrated with any system.

Here are few open source reporting tools...

BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tools)

http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/

Pentaho

http://reporting.pentaho.org/

OpenReports

http://oreports.com/

DataVision

http://datavision.sourceforge.net/

Jasper

http://jasperforge.org/projects/jasperreports

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence_tools

HP OpenView Alternatives

HP openview is a network management system of Hewlett Packard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_OpenView

Here are few alternatives for this...

Nagios: Open source monitoring system for mac, linux and unix platforms.

http://www.nagios.org/about/overview

OpenNMS: Open source monitoring system for linux platform.

http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Main_Page

Few more

http://www.zenoss.com/

http://www.nedi.ch/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pandora/

Windows Notepad Alternative

Microsoft windows notepad is a simple application to create and edit text files.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad_(Windows)

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/app_notepad.mspx?mfr=true

Here is an alternative for this...

EmEditor: I must say it handles files with text like a pro. They claim this

"From writing to programming, differentiate yourself with a fast, lightweight, extendable text editor for Windows!"

http://www.emeditor.com/

Microsoft Outlook Alternative

Microsoft Outlook is an email client but it also has other features like calender, contact organizer, task manager etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Outlook

Here are few alternatives for this...

Thunderbird

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Pegasus Mail

http://www.pmail.com/

Barca

http://www.pocosystems.com/home/

GMail

http://gmail.com/

Opera

http://www.opera.com/browser/

Zimbra Desktop

http://www.zimbra.com/products/desktop.html

Pimero

http://www.pimero.com/en/

Postbox

http://www.postbox-inc.com/

Spicebird

http://www.spicebird.com/

Microsoft Visual Studio Alternative

Microsoft visual studio is a development environment by Microsoft for the development of different languages and platforms including Windows, Mobile, Win CE, silverlight etc.
It has a great interface with extensive features, intellisense and easy integration with various softwares.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studio

Here are few alternatives for this...

Visual Web Developer Express: A free version of visual studio for windows platform that just supports the development of web applications for .net framework.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/web/

Visual C# Express Edition A free version of visual studio for windows platform that just supports the development of Winform C# applications for .net framework.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/windows/

SharpDevelop A free open source IDE for windows platform for the development of C# and VB.net applications for .net framework.
http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharpDevelop

MonoDevelop IDE for windows,mac and linux platform for the development of C#, Java, Boo, Nemerle,C, C++, VB.net and Python.

http://monodevelop.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonoDevelop

Microsoft Office Alternative

Microsoft office is a product of Microsoft. It has business applications like Word, Access, Excel, power point etc.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

This runs on windows platform and is a commercial product, you may find price information at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101211561033.aspx

There is an open source alternative available named "OpenOffice".
http://www.openoffice.org/

This runs on windows, linux, sun solaris and mac operating systems. It has another specific version for MAC OS called "neooffice".
http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php