Jasper Reports Server's unique Source Code Management System

Jasper Reports Server is basically a stand alone as well as embedded  reporting server which can be easily used for deploying the Jasper Reports. It provides a way to embed reports as well as analytics into a web or mobile application, as well as act a informational hub.

Server is made to securely share and manage the Jasper reports and analytic views. The security feature is implemented via role management and user creation facility in Jasper Server.

Now there are two ways you can use Jasper Server
1. Standalone application
2. Embed into services, or applications.

Now moving on to the Source Code Management,

    What benefits do Source Code Management tools provide?

SCM tools help development teams in many ways:

• Collaboration: SCM tools prevent one user from accidentally overwriting the changes of another, allowing many developers to work on the same code without stepping one each other's toes.
• History: SCM tools track the complete development history of the software, including the exact changes which have occurred between releases and who made those changes.
• Release notes generation: Given the tracking of each change, the SCM can be used to generate notes for their software releases which accurately capture all of the changes included in the new release.
• Documentation and test management: SCM tools can be used to manage not just software source code, but also test suites and documentation for their software.
• Change notifications: To keep interested members of the team informed when changes occur to the source code.

   Who uses SCM tools?

SCM tools are used by:

• Project developers who are writing source code.
• Project testers who need to download the very latest changes.
• Advanced users who want to try out code that is not yet stable, mature or released.

In JasperServer, the SCM is managed very intelligently, whenever you draw a report for viewing in then you always get a version of the report, so you are not really modifying what is there on server. 

Jasper Server always keeps the original content on the server and provides the user with an instance of the report which is directly stored in the Temp folder, and if you need the modified version you have created as the current version then you need to replace the report with the current version of the report, by right clicking on the report in the repository and then replacing the report.

In light of this feature there is also a extreme care to be taken that which version is being replaced, because if once replaced the version of the report will be changes and it would be not possible to roll back the change.

This feature is really very great when you need to work on the small modification in the report as you can draw a copy on the local system and work onto that until you get the desired modification as well as you can simultaneously compare the previous version of the report and if you get the desired changes executed you can replace the report and have a new version of the report.

Hope this information helps you a lot!!
Cheers!!