Overview

ReportMill has the best integration story of any reporting tool - simply copy the ReportMill jar to your developer and deployment machines and add it to your Java Class Path. From then on, you can turn any Java dataset, in any Java application, into PDF and Flash reports.

However, adding the ReportMill jar to your class path can be done many different ways depending on your developer tools, application server software and platform. If it's not done properly, you will either end up with a compile time error (something like "Can't find com.reportmill.foundation.RMDocument") or a runtime error (usually java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError).

The CLASSPATH Environment variable

Though Sun prefers for you to provide extra jars when launching your Java application via the -cp or -classpath flags, they also provide information on how to set the CLASSPATH environment variable:

Windows: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/tooldocs/win32/classpath.html
Unix: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/tooldocs/solaris/classpath.html

Trouble Shooting

One of the first steps you might take is to search the documentation of your developer tools for information regarding "adding third-party jars". The second step is to have your application immediately print the current class path after launch:

System.out.println(System.getProperty("java.class.path");

This will at least tell you what is currently in your Java CLASSPATH. When it is properly configured, you should see the complete path to your copy of the ReportMill jar listed here (including the ReportMill.jar).

Java Extensions

Some Java platforms offer an extensions directory. This is fine for deployment-only machines, but for developer machines it will interfere with the auto-update feature of Java Web Start. Even though Java Web Start will continue to download editor patches, the layout application will launch with the version of the jar found in the extension directory. This can be quite confusing.