Jasper Blog

Open Source Advice for the next President of the United States - Part I

2008-11-03T20:36:16Z

It’s November 3, and I (like so many other Americans and others around the world) breathlessly await the results of tomorrow’s U.S. Presidential election. Regardless of your party affiliation, political ideals, or social leanings, you must acknowledge the historical significance of this election. Americans will elect either the first African American President or the first female Vice President. Most importantly, perhaps, U.S. citizens will appoint a leader who will inherit so much of what has gone right and wrong with American politics, foreign relations, economic policy, market regulation, and the very gravitas of the sole, remaining Superpower. What do you think? Will America once again find its mojo under the inspired leadership of either John McCain or Barack Obama? We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’ve thought long and hard about some specific advice for America’s next president. And, I’ve decided to collect these thoughts under an “open source” banner, believing that building community, transparency and more rapid advancement is not only good for software products, but for nation-building as well. So, here goes – my advice for the next President of the United States . . .

Fix the U.S. economy. It’s true that the global economy is more intricately connected now than ever. But, as President, your first responsibility is to get America back on its economic track. Remember that, at more than an estimated $14 trillion in 2008, the U.S. GDP still represents nearly 25% of the global GDP. So, in many ways, as the U.S. economy goes, so goes that of the world. Overcoming the current financial markets collapse, getting people back to work, and moderating spiraling prices in staples (such as energy, food) and other expenses (healthcare) should be top-priority. Don’t waste any time here. Appoint to Cabinet positions the nation’s best and brightest to craft creative solutions and track their progress until GDP is growing 4% annually.

Build the Global Community. There is no telling how much foreign relations ground we’ve lost in the past decade or more. But, as President, you must focus on the future – and re-building America’s standing among all nations will likely be your greatest, enduring challenge. In open source software, our existence is owed to building strong community and so I urge you to remember that building great community means to first be a great community member. To do so may mean letting go of some of the pride and proprietary thinking that has plagued many of your predecessors. Embracing a new level of transparency in policy and chivalry in character will serve you and your country well in reaching out anew to a world that deserves and wants a respectful role model.

While the world is a global village, there is a domestic aspect to building community. Technology has penetrated so many facets of our lives and has had a profound impact on the "flattening" of economies around the world. Yet, the U.S. government and its leaders have not integrated into their work what we in the technology call “Web 2.0”. Can you imagine a world where citizens and leaders at all levels could communicate openly in online forums made possible with open source software? I would call this “OneWorldForge” and the implications for governance are profound. As President, you can lead this online change and build the world’s largest and strongest community, starting with the United States as the example.

[this post continues in the next entry . . . ]

Open Source Advice for the next President of the United States - Part II

2008-11-03T20:15:20Z

[This post continues from the one above]

Invest in the Future. America is a nation of builders and innovators. The strength of the economy and the very psyche of the country are founded on innovation. But, you surely know that the number of U.S. college graduates focused on science and math have been declining for two decades. As we approach 2010, the U.S.’s distinction as a top generator of the world’s best engineers, scientists, and mathematicians is clearly threatened. To maintain the country’s storied reputation, re-institute the government-sponsored scholarship and grants process so that more students will continue on with their education and choose technical subjects as their field. Also, re-enable private student loans and corporate tax credits (with special incentives), especially for those students focused on continuing education in the technical fields. It may take another decade to really pay-off, but there are no more beneficial long-term programs that will fuel America’s future.

Demand better technology in Government. The U.S. Federal Government, by and large, is known for spending more and getting less from technology than practically any other organization. This is despite a byzantine set of spending and procurement policies and rules which were ironically designed to do the opposite. Here, I can offer one incredibly useful tip: require that all U.S. government organizations consider open source software alternatives wherever they exist. Some European governments have been doing so for several years and are already reaping tremendous cost and technology advantages as a result. If you need any specific advice about open source business intelligence software, there is a community of technology innovators pushing the envelope and I, as well as many others, would be happy to share our knowledge.

I am sure that your first few months in office will be grueling. As you take the helm of the largest economy and most influential country in the world, remember there is good news and bad news. The good news is that the conflict and war in Iraq seem to be improving, which should give you more time to focus on the advice I’m providing here. The bad news is that if the good news is Iraq, you’ve got a tough road ahead of you. I wish you good luck. And, God bless America.

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

Technology Leaders Summit: Where is Open Source?

2008-10-24T06:03:52Z

I was sure this would be a valuable and interesting use of my time as I filed in to the plush Four Seasons Palo Alto conference room. DLA Piper (a large, well-known global law firm) had invited me to attend their day-long “Technology Leaders Summit” earlier this week and I wanted to arrive early – not only to enjoy the variety of high-end breakfast foods, but to ensure a good seat for the featured speakers and panelists. To summarize, I will simply say there were highs and lows which corresponded with the caliber of those presenting and the ideas they represented (or how well they represented them).

Disappointing to me was the very first session, a moderated Q&A session with Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s current Chief Architect and storied pioneer of much that is software. I’m afraid I found almost no good answers to some pretty good Qs. Surprisingly content-free, relative to my expectations. My primary take-away was that Microsoft has NO interest in continuing to pursue Yahoo, despite its belief that an advertising-focused delivery model will be important to the future of software (umm, errr, did he mean that it already is important, or just that Microsoft isn’t participating particularly well?).

Next, a panel session on the “Latest Developments in Business Models”, included open source in its description (along with all the other likely suspects, such as SaaS, cloud computing and social networking). But, I should have known something was askew when the expert panel included no one with background or insight in open source. Still, I had to listen. After about 50 minutes of interesting dialog on cloud computing and how to enable innovation and disruption within a large, established enterprise, one other member of the audience was suffering from my same curiosity. Before I could act, he rose and asked: “What about open source? Is this category now relegated to the equivalent of generic drugs, destined to provide not innovation but only faster, cheaper alternatives to proprietary technologies? And, if so, is that fundamentally bad?” The panel muddled through some answer which amounted to “faster and cheaper is not inherently bad because it can inspire and enable new solutions where they couldn’t have emerged before because of cost or budget limitations”. The panel then moved on to conclude with comments on cloud computing and disruptive innovation in the enterprise, I think.

So, I was left to ponder, alone for the moment, where in the midst of a conference designed for technology leaders had the vibrant discussion of open source gone. My answer came when Jonathan Schwartz took the stage right after lunch. As the Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan is an outspoken believer in open source. So much so, of course, that his company spent $1 billion to acquire MySQL earlier this year. You can follow Jonathan’s thoughts and ideas through his well-written blog on Sun’s site. Not only did Jonathan restore my faith that the most innovative, high-quality software being created today is all being done using the open source model, he reminded me that the most interesting customers and users of these products are the new faithful. I particularly enjoyed his reference to proprietary software vendors dominating customer environments in categories of basic application functionality, the kind of systems that IT staffs seek to make ever-more efficient (ERP, CRM, Payroll, etc.). In contrast, open source software and vendors are dominating in areas where computing resources need to be maximized and more fully leveraged, especially in web-based application design, development, virtualization, and delivery. Think of the world’s largest media, social networking, and global services firms. The complete software stack driving those environments is open source, nearly from top to bottom. I realized that while open source may not solve all the problems in software, it surely continues to share a seat at the table of disruption because it delivers so many powerful advantages for the customer. In this sense, I was reminded that open innovation, as a primary reason for and advantage of open source software, was indeed alive and well – it had just been temporarily misplaced behind the spinach quiche in the foyer.

As Jonathan explained Sun’s commitment to open source, based on its business and technical merit, my anxiety faded. Then, I focused on my personal commitment in my role at Jaspersoft: to create the simple, powerful business intelligence that will reach more people in the world than any of the aged, proprietary vendors that preceded us. Amen.

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

Microsoft, Business Intelligence, & the Open Source Software Advantage

2008-10-10T18:04:41Z

This week, Microsoft hosted its annual Business Intelligence conference and the early announcements from this event have been (as expected) fascinating. Most interestingly, Microsoft has introduced new code-named projects designed to support BI on a “massive scale at low TCO” and deliver “managed self-service BI” and “People-ready BI”. I will say, if this were buzzword bingo, Microsoft would have a covered card. So, what does all this mean?

At least one analyst has already weighed in and correctly pointed out that Microsoft’s announced projects won’t deliver products with real features for some time (Microsoft itself estimates 2010). And even then, on Microsoft’s behalf, I fear that basing its pervasive BI strategy on the client software underpinnings of Microsoft Office is dubious. We know that the average desktop user consumes about 10% of the feature set of the major Microsoft office products (Word and Excel, particularly). If you’re like me, many of the more sophisticated Office features are surely out-of-reach, unless you commit to attending a course or spend a lot of time reading the documentation. So, adding more business intelligence capabilities to an already-overburdened Excel and expecting this to become used pervasively seems specious, at best.

Does the world need more complex desktop office suites? Or, does pervasive BI really require a very different approach? It won’t surprise you to know that I believe the future of business intelligence is about lightweight client software, web 2.0-savvy interfaces throughout, adaptable and modular architectures, and the ability to deliver consistent functionality to any intelligent device (not just those that can run Microsoft Office properly). I’ve written here about these principles before (under the headline of "Web 2.0 and Pervasive BI). And, as sure as I’m writing this, I recognize that the next five years will yield a number of barely predictable advancements, all web-based, to which an agile BI toolset must adapt. How does a proprietary architecture built upon aged, complex designs flex to quickly support such new capabilities? It doesn’t. Market-driven adaptability, based on a modern and flexible architecture, is one of the real (and less talked about) advantages of open source software. It is surely the way we’ve been building Jaspersoft’s BI tools into the disruptive force that is destined to make BI pervasive.

Open source software, fundamentally, is about the community’s involvement in the development of software – which helps ensure new capabilities are added quickly and in a way that is consistent with the needs of the market. If a feature or capability is important, the odds that one or more of Jaspersoft’s nearly 90,000 registered community members will want to help is extremely high. How could 90,000 community members advance our products meaningfully without an open, modular, modern architecture that not only allows but promotes such advancement? Imagine a developer outside of Microsoft trying to add a feature to the proprietary code base of Microsoft Office. Now that would require business intelligence.

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

Europe, ETL & High-Performance Data Warehousing

2008-09-25T21:23:10Z

I spent all of last week traveling through Europe – meeting with open source partners and speaking with analysts and press about all-things business intelligence and open source. It was truly “trains, planes, and automobiles”, with a few city buses tossed in for complexity. In total, a very valuable trip, though. As example, I met with John Powell, CEO of Alfresco (www.alfresco.com). We swapped successes and concerns and I was thrilled to learn that, like Jaspersoft, this open source content management leader is doing very well, despite the vex-some global economy (or perhaps because of the vex-some global economy?).

My primary task in travel, though, was to amplify the important announcements that have occurred for Jaspersoft and the world of open source business intelligence . . . no doubt you’ve already stitched together the theme. Just in case, I’ll spell it all out for you here briefly.

First, in mid-August, we debuted a remarkable demonstration of our technology integrated with Infobright’s Brighthouse product - which runs atop MySQL – and provides an optimized, columnar-oriented data warehouse engine. Key to this demonstration is the expertise at OpenBI, one of our most highly-skilled open source BI consulting partners (www.openbi.com). For unmatched scalability and value, this combination of products is truly second-to-none. Check this out at the on-demand webinar section of our web site (http://www.jaspersoft.com/nw_events1.html).

Second, earlier this month, Jaspersoft and Infobright (www.infobright.com) announced a bundle of open source (Community Edition) software to dramatically alter the value delivered in this arena. Specifically, the two companies “today announced plans to deliver a joint end-to-end open source BI and data warehouse solution, available as a JasperForge project. JasperForge.org is the largest open source community portal with hundreds of projects for the Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite. The new joint project bundle will be based on Jaspersoft and several Sun open source products, as well as the new open source data warehouse software, Infobright Community Edition (ICE). This enterprise-class, self-managing solution is a proven alternative to today’s high-cost, high-maintenance data warehouse products.”

So, at this point, the stage seems set . . . and our focus on delivering valuable, scalable open source BI for even sophisticated data warehouse-based projects is obvious. But then, this week, we added even more mettle to this equation by extending our partnership with Talend, the leading commercial open source data integration company.

For nearly two years, Talend (www.talend.com) has been behind our JasperETL product, which enables the simple and quick construction of data warehouses and data marts so that data can be fully utilized by JasperServer and JasperAnalysis.In summary, we announced that we have extended our partnership agreement by developing an entirely new version of the JasperETL solution, designed specifically to include the features most used by Jaspersoft’s BI customers. Powered by Talend, this JasperETL package will combine the elements of Talend Integration Suite that are the most relevant for BI users, and will meet Jaspersoft customers’ requests for an ETL capability that delivers more power and flexibility in their BI deployments. The new version of JasperETL will be offered exclusively from Jaspersoft and will be included in every paid subscription of the Jaspersoft BI suite.

Renewing and extending our agreement with Talend seemed perfectly appropriate under the backdrop of the Paris Capitale du Libre event, which was held this week in Paris. My last post cited the fantastic progress and momentum that open source (and Jaspersoft) is seeing in Europe. So lastly, I’ll simply encourage you to read our press release (dated September 24) to learn more about our customer and community traction in the Euro Zone: http://www.jaspersoft.com/nw_press_jaspersoft_translates_european_roots.html

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

Open Source Momentum in Europe

2008-09-16T20:33:59Z

For me, this week is full of press and analyst meetings and precedes a week of conference activities that will draw together open source leaders and aficionados for some of the most advanced thought and discussion in all of open source. Must be in California, right? Wrong. Europe. The two events next week (both in Paris), the Open Source Think Tank and the Paris Capitale du Libre, will surely advance the open source agenda and spirit of collaboration destined to further this cause.

In case you weren’t aware, Europe has been quietly leading many aspects of the open source revolution. Formal adoption and use of open source products and technologies is highest in the Euro zone. A study conducted earlier this year by Forrester shows, for example, that 24% of (surveyed) organizations in France have already put open source software into production use with another 15% likely to do so during this coming year. Doesn’t hurt that several major European governments are literally requiring the consideration and use of open source software by all government organizations . . . and this is trickling into the private sector as well.

We’re very proud of Jaspersoft’s European roots and momentum. Our technology founders, Teodor Danciu and Giulio Toffoli, are Romanian and Italian respectively and we have long-created our core products in development teams across 3 European countries. And, while our community continues to grow rapidly throughout the world, the interest and contribution from Europe seems to continue disproportionately, remaining second-to-none.

We have many significant points of European community and commercial momentum that I’ll be describing here in this coming week and next. In the meantime, I invite you to check out the expanded French and German content at Jaspersoft’s commercial web site, www.jaspersoft.com (select the "Worldwide Sites" option). Merci and Vielen Dank.

Brian Gentile
Chief Executive Officer
Jaspersoft

Web 2.0 and Pervasive Business Intelligence

2008-09-02T23:07:55Z

A recent online ComputerWorld article is entitled "Can Web 2.0 Save BI?". The article focuses mostly on the mash-up functionality delivered by a Web 2.0-based analytic application and the simplicity it can deliver to even a novice end user. I found this article interesting but narrow in its scope. So, I wondered: "How important are Web 2.0 principles and technologies to the current and near-future state of business intelligence?". I say they provide vital, lifeblood, must-have, without-them-you-perish capabilities. At Jaspersoft, we are completely convicted about defining and delivering the ultimate Web 2.0 experience in business intelligence. Here are three reasons why.

1. Aged BI Architectures That Need to Be Displaced. The large, proprietary BI software vendors have very dated software architectures (in some cases, 20+ years to origin) that will greatly constrain them as they need to transition to more and more truly web-based capabilities. These vendors will have to mostly rely on web services extensions and / or retro-fitting their C/C++ underpinnings to accommodate a web audience with growing consumer-like expectations. So, in addition to the BI consolidation and market opportunity that it presents (for Jaspersoft), these proprietary vendors are leaving a technology gap wide open for new, modern software architectures like what we offer.

2. The Consumerization of Information. For each of the last 2 major releases, Jaspersoft has been busy building-in a growing array of pure thin-client, web-based features that rely on the most modern technologies: AJAX, Dynamic HTML, rich media integration, HTML "frames" for elegantly creating composite dashboards and reports, and the "sideband" dialog that can be orchestrated between browser (client) and server to make sophisticated user interaction more seamless. The result is a user experience that is superior to many desktop applications (because it can draw on the collaborative technologies of the web, like the ability to quickly "mash-up" data, at the presentation layer, from a variety of web sources) and provides the "consumer-like" feel that is now a requirement based on much higher customer expectations. Most importantly, because of our modern approach, we\'ll just be able to continue building in features like mash-ups as new technologies and customer requirements emerge.

3. Better Business Intelligence. Lastly, one of the primary reasons all of this is important for Jaspersoft (and its community and customers) isn\'t because it provides for a compelling, web-based experience (although it does). It is because these technologies will allow us to do NEW things in BI that our aged, proprietary competitors CANNOT (or cannot with any ease). Here’s just one example: Jaspersoft has been steadily introducing more and more functionality into the most comfortable and common BI construct available: the report. Everyone knows we clearly lead the world of reporting (based on the remarkable popularity of JasperReports and iReport). We are uniquely prepared (and suited) to leverage this broad base of community and customers who rely on us (strategically) for superior reporting and then continue to introduce more and more analytic capabilities within our familiar reporting construct. This combination of analytic features within a simple report will allow everyone to interact with and analyze data much more fully than even interactive reports of the present allow. Delivering simple and sophisticated analytic (OLAP-like) functionality within the reporting environment will allow the average user to:

a) feel comfortable performing analytic chores with data that they would not through a stand-alone OLAP client tool, and

b) not leave his production / application environment for a completely different analytic system (and potentially data store(s)) to "analyze" data . . . in which case new learning must occur and the data sources immediately become suspect.

So, Jaspersoft\'s answer to "Web 2.0 Pervasive BI" is to leverage the comfortable environment of the report interface and deliver within deeper, richer (but simple) interactive analytics so that every user can become more capable and informed. Jaspersoft could not provide such rich reporting and analytic functionality without the benefit of the Web 2.0 technologies that define our software. We expect it and so do our community and customers.

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

Reporting for Beans...or, how to make a valuable Java IDE even more valuable

2008-08-14T14:22:33Z

Today, Sun has announced the availability of NetBeans v6.5, the latest installment of its very popular Java development environment. The NetBeans community is enormous, reaching more than 600,000 members and spanning 130 countries. Along with the many advancements that Sun will describe in v6.5 (and there are many), Jaspersoft is announcing the general availability of its iReport plug-in for NetBeans. If you\'ve been paying attention, you know that Giulio Toffoli (the founder of and primary contributor to the iReport project) has been working with the community toward this v1.0 release for more than six months. During this lengthy beta period, the NetBeans community has been enthusiastically involved - having downloaded the early versions of this iReport plug-in nearly 28,000 times, making it the most popular 3rd party NetBeans downloads during that entire period.

If you\'ve not seen the NetBeans version of iReport, you should check out a short video of Giulio demonstrating this product: http://netbeans.tv/screencasts/iReport-from-JasperSoft-357 .

Then, to get your own copy of iReport for NetBeans, simply download and give it a try: http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/faces/MainPage.jsp .

We couldn\'t be happier with our progress with this product for the NetBeans community or the community\'s response. Overall, this parallels our relationship with Sun, where we are working strategically together to deliver much greater value to the open source software world. Some other recent examples: Jaspersoft\'s products have always been built using pure Java, support JavaDB, we\'ve certified on Sun\'s 64-bit platforms, support Solaris and OpenSolaris, are currently certifying with GlassFish, and have won the Duke\'s Choice Award. My guess is that there\'ll be more valuable technology advancements between Sun and Jaspersoft before this year is over. For now, you can track Sun\'s NetBeans 6.5 announcement here http://blogs.sun.com/ontherecord/ .

Lastly and in case you\'ve been wondering what\'s up with Jasper4MySQL (the MySQL OEM edition of JasperServer), we\'ve recently upgraded it to v3, bringing it up-to-date with all the significant features and capabilities of the latest version of JasperServer Professional Edition (to learn more about Jaspersoft v3, go to http://www.jaspersoft.com/JasperSoft_Version3.html ). The MySQL embedded community surely deserves the most advanced open source reporting and analytic environment available, don\'t they? We\'re glad to deliver it.

Brian Gentile
Chief Executive Officer
Jaspersoft

Welcome to the new JasperForge!

2008-07-18T17:33:13Z

Jaspersoft Community: Welcome to the new JasperForge! We are thrilled to provide this much more advanced Forge platform and expect it to deliver the on-going foundation we know is required to sustain the largest, most vibrant ecosystem in the business intelligence industry. Your active use of this Forge combined with feedback on what you like and what you’d like us to improve, will fuel continued advancements that everyone will share. To this end, please visit the dedicated forum http://www.jasperforge.org/plugins/espforum/browse.php?group_id=100&forumid=117 we have created to listen to and receive your valuable feedback.

So, what is so exciting about this new JasperForge?

Community and Private Project Areas – even more so than the first JasperForge (2 years ago now), this new site provides each community member with dedicated space, complete with collaboration tools to create and manage both community and private projects. Sophisticated developer tools ensure the simple creation and management of file releases and file download, software version control, artifact tracking, developer and user discussion forums, document management and sharing, and wikis. It has never been easier to launch a new project (of many types), find like-minded people to help advance the project, and then manage it toward faster success.

Extended Social Networking Functions – delivered via enhanced user My Page capabilities. By extension, the broader Jasper community (including customers and partners) can create projects directly on the new Forge, or easily connect remote projects, tools, or the artifacts of any tool to the new JasperForge via Ecosystem Enablement. This unique Ecosystem Enablement function (a feature of the underlying EssentiaESP platform) will allow us to eventually use JasperForge to align our Jaspersoft (internal) engineering team with outside contractors, the open source community of contributors and reviewers, business partners, and suppliers – all within the same community and ecosystem. These extended social networking tools will dramatically improve the total community’s ability to communicate and collaborate.

Rich Content Management – now extended to every user, every tool, and every page in the new JasperForge (with the exception of artifact tracking). This rich content management capability ensures that we deliver a consistent, sophisticated, and modern user experience to all community members and visitors.

I could go on and on about the new features of this new JasperForge. But, it’s more important for you to experience the new site and then tell us about it. We hope that the new features and capabilities make your JasperForge experience significantly better.

Thanks for your help in making the Jaspersoft business intelligence community, via JasperForge, the most vibrant in the world.

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

JasperServer v3 Community Edition Release

2008-07-07T19:25:13Z

OK, with JasperServer v3 out the door, I wanted to let you know about some details of the release.

The open source "Community Edition" release has a number of enhancements that make JasperServer more interactive. The repository manager, which allows you to browse report definitions, data sources and other JasperServer metadata and content, is now a drag and drop, explorer interface, making it much easier to find reports, analysis views and other information.

The underlying JasperReports version in JasperServer v3 is 3.0.0. With that has come the ability to export JasperServer reports to Flash, a great contribution from Victor Kolesnikov in Kiev, Ukraine, who worked with Teodor to get this out. The Flash based reports can be seen through the browser. The enhancements to JasperReport's ability to customize text, like truncation, are also included.

Parameters for reports ("input controls") can now be localized, and you have the option for the parameters to appear as a pop-up (previous default behavior) or within the page.

A lot of people use JasperServer as a report generator from other applications, running reports from a URL rather than having users log in to JasperServer directly. To help with this, URLs to run reports can include a user name and password to maintain security, and a locale, so that reports can be easily localized. For example:

http:///jasperserver/flow.html?_flowId=viewReportFlow&reportUnit=/reports/samples/AllAccounts&j_username=jasperadmin&j_password=jasperadmin&reportLocale=pt_BR

The report resulting from this URL will appear in a standard JasperServer view report screen. As before, you can customize the look and feel of the screen and controls by configuring the SiteMesh templates to your needs or adding your own JSPs for the report.

For those people who use the JasperServer database to store users and passwords, there is now a password expiration option, and the ability to the user to easily change their password.

Moving all or part of your repository between databases has been made easier with the "update on import" option. As before, you can export the repository onto a file system, and then import into a different repository, and now you can overwrite existing resources if needed.

In order to understand how people are using JasperServer, we have added a "heartbeat" mechanism that lets us know some limited details about running servers. It can be easily disabled if needed. You can find more details about the heartbeat at http://www.jaspersoft.com/heartbeat/

As always, bugs have been fixed. The community did a great amount of testing of the v3 release candidate. Release notes are at https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=162962&release_id=609879

Enjoy!

Sherman
Jaspersoft