Basic BIRT Report Development

John Ward, Innovent Solutions

2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0 | Date | Other Information, if necessary

BIRT and us Who are I? Who are you?

 Who are we?
 John Ward, BIRT user  Innovent Solutions  Author: Practical Data Analysis and Reporting with BIRT

 Who are you?

 Name, Company, technical background (C, SQL, Java, reporting)  Experience with BIRT  What are you hoping to get out of todays presentation?

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Agenda
      BIRT Overview Lesson 1 Simple Reports Lesson 2 Charting in Reports Lesson 3 BIRT Scripting Lesson 4 Report Libraries and Templates Lesson 5 Deploying with the Web Viewer

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Objectives
          Become Familiar with BIRT Designer Know how to create and design BIRT reports and projects Access Data in BIRT Reports Report Layout and Formatting Using Styles Sort, Group Data Use Report Parameters Create and Format Charts Write Expressions Using Scripting Creating and Using Libraries and Templates Deploy BIRT Reports

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

BIRT Tasks Audience

Easy
 BIRT Report Developers  Drag & Drop, Charting, Properties

Presentation BIRT Scripting   Advanced BIRT Developers Focus

 Deploy Experts  Reporting Integration  BIRT Extension  BIRT Core Development  BIRT Viewer  Design Engine API  BIRT Extension Points  Eclipse Development

Hard

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

BIRT Target Users & Benefits

  Focused on $, developer productivity End user satisfaction Minimizes Eclipse developer training Increase developer productivity Lower costs

Managers

  

    

Reports that support business activities Ever changing business requirements Quick availability of reports Reports that also look good Content as HTML and PDF

  

Embed pre-designed reports in application Designs reports using Eclipse-based designer Creates report libraries & templates

End Users

Java Developers
    Saves calories vs. JSP/Java Minutes vs. days for HTML, vs. weeks for PDF Minutes to modify as user requirements change Iterative development gets the right reports quicker

Report Developers
    Powerful and easy to use report designer Creates & uses report libraries & templates Flexible, web page design metaphor Ability to leverage complex components

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

High Level BIRT Architecture

Report Designer Eclipse Report Designer Eclipse DTP ODA Chart Designer Custom Designer Report Engine Data Transform. Services Generation Services Charting Engine Presentation Services

Report Design Engine

HTML PDF Print

XML Report Design

Data Data

Report Document

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Reporting

Objectives: Become Familiar with BIRT Workbench To create a BIRT Reporting Project To create a BIRT Report Introduce the BIRT Workbench Create a simple Product Profitability & Inventory Report End User Customizing via Report Parameters

2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0 | Date | Other Information, if necessary

The Quick Tour

 The BIRT Perspective
 Data View, Palette, Outline View, Layout, Code, Preview

 BIRT Data
 Data Sources, Data Sets, Parameters

 BIRT Layout
 Grids, Tables, Controls, Data Binding

 BIRT Code
 Expression Builders vs. Code Pages

 BIRT Preview
 HTML View, BIRT Viewer, PDF Viewer

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Birt Designer
 Graphical report designer, similar to web development applications such as Dreamweaver or Nvu  Provides visual environment to quickly draw reports  Provides mechanisms to quickly create data connections  Provides Project Management

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Workbench

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Navigator
 Navigates through Eclipse projects and files under those projects  Allows user to run report inside of BIRT

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Outline
 Provides hierarchy of current report  Allows for easy navigation of report elements to change properties in the property pane  When selecting libraries, use the outline to copy non-visual components such as data sources and sets

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Palette
 Contains a number of visual elements used in BIRT report designs  Similar to Toolboxes in MS Visual Studio and other visual IDE

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Data Explorer
 Contains.
Data Sources: Connections to database. Data Sets: Same as a Recordset. Allows users to navigate through Query Results. Report Parameters: Used as the interface for report parameters that will be passed to a Data Set.

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Report Designer

 Area where report layout is designed, previews of the report are seen, scripts and events are coded, and XML source for report can be viewed.
Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Areas of the BIRT Workspace (Cont.)

 Properties Pane.  Properties for BIRT objects can be modified, such as Data Set Binding, Font information, formatting for Data Set returns such as Row Highlighting and Color Alternation.

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Top Level Report Layout

 Master Pages
 Contains elements visible on every page, such as page headers

 Grids
 Used to position elements on page  Contains no Data Bindings

 Tables
 Grids with Data Binding  Has Header, Detail, and Footer bands

 Lists
 Single Column Tables

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Static Report

Background: Our Manager, Mr Ernie, wants a generic letterhead. Build a letter head for Classic Cars using containers to format the layout. Objectives: Familiarize you with the concept of containers for Report Elements

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Setting up a Project
 BIRT uses the eclipse paradigm of using projects  File/new/project  From the project wizard, select report project from under BIRT  Set project name  Projects are shown in the eclipse navigator

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Setting up a Report
 With eclipse project open  From file menu

File/new/report
 From navigator

Right-mouse click on report project, new/report

 Select project to associate report with and give file name

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Containers

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Data Access
 Data Sources
 Handled data connections

 Data Sets
 Defined Data to be used in Report

 Parameters
 Used for User Interaction to Filter Data  Cascading Parameters

 Parameter Binding

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Setting up JDBC
 Setup is done via the Data Explorer when setting up a new data source.  Click on the manage drivers button.  Point to JDBC ZIP/JAR file.  In order to set up connection, you must know the JDBC URL.  Can set a template of the JDBC URL format for future use of driver. This makes it easier for future connections.  Datasources can be added to libraries for report projects that use consistent datasources.

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Creating a Data Set

 With data source(s) created, right-click on data set and chose new.  Type in SQL query.  Can create Joined Data Sets to combine 2 or more data sources.  Here I am using a questionmark, which will bind a report parameter to a query.  Datasets can be added to libraries.  http://birtworld.blogspot.com/2006/05/joi ned-data-sets-with-birt-21.html

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Report Parameters
 Used to create dynamic result sets from queries  Binds user input to filter results sets  Parameters get assigned in sequential order, first parameter gets assigned to first bind variable in query  Report Parameters get stored as global variables in reports, accessible in scripts and expressions in addition to data.

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Tables
 Slots
 Header  Detail  Footer

 Data Binding
 Makes table/list aware of values in Data Set

 Grouping
 Group on value in Data Set

 Sorting
 Sort on value in Data Set

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Styles
 Built In  CSS  Themes

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Aggregates
 Aggregate operations
 Sum  Avg  Count

 Done at the binding level

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Viewing Reports
 Preview

 Web Viewer

 Emitters

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Report Run

 Can Run from Navigator or from File Menu  Reports that get run open in separate browser window.  Results can be saved.  Option to view as HTML, Word, Excel, PDF

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Building Reports - Product Profitability Report

Scenario: You work for the Classic Cars company. Your boss, Mr Ernie, wants a report that is a simple listing of all product sales in the database, with the total costs and total profits for each product arranged by State and City, sorted in order of decreasing amounts of total profits. Provide a report parameter to limit the listing to just 1 state. Make sure that the parameter only lists those states already in the database. Objective: To Familiarize ourselves with building reports with Data awareness and work with data.

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Product Profitability Report

1. Bring up Eclipse 2. Open the BIRT Perspective 3. In the Navigator View create a BIRT Report Project 4. In the Project create a BIRT Report 5. Add a data source to the Classic Models Sample database 6. Add a data set to list products, total costs, total profits 7. Add report items 8. Format report 9. Group items 10.Sort items 11.Add report parameters 12.Add data set parameters 13.Preview

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Lesson 2 Charting in Reports

2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0 | Date | Other Information, if necessary

Basic Concepts Charting in Reports

 Charts integrated with BIRT Report Designer  Charts can be used standalone as a library  Wide variety of chart types  Many formatting options  Charts are extensible to include more types

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Pie Charts

 2D, 2D with depth  Ratio, Explode slices, Min Slice

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Bar Charts

   

Horizontal, Vertical 2D, 2D w/depth, 3D Stacked, Side-by-side Percent, Logarithmic

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Bar Charts

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Cones Tubes Pyramids

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Line Charts

    
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Horizontal, Vertical 2D, 3D Various types of markers Line styles, thicknesses Drawn as Line, Curve
Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Stock Charts

   
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CandleStick / Bar Stick Horizontal, Vertical 2D Formatting control

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Scatter Charts

    
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Horizontal, Vertical 2D Various types of markers Line styles, thicknesses Drawn as Line, Curve
Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Area Charts

    

Horizontal, Vertical 2D, 2D w/depth, 3D Stacked, Side-by-side Percent, Logarithmic Drawn as Line, Curve

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Difference/Range Charts

 2D. Curve or Straight lines.  New Negative/Positive Fill also works for other types.
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Meter Charts

 2D, formatting control  Regions, Needle styles, thicknesses

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Gantt Charts

 2D. Custom Bar width  Custom Start/End Markers  Data : Task ID / Start Date, End Date, Task Name
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Bubble Charts

 2D  Custom Bubble shape Square, triangle, diamond, star, icon

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Data Binding in Charts

 Bind through Data Set

 Bind through Report Element

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Interactivity in Charts
 Can jump to anchor points  Drill Through to other Reports  Interactivity through Javascript

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Charting in Your Report

Scenario: Mr. Ernie wants a report that is a simple listing of all products in the database, with the number of units in stock. Arrange the products for each Product Line and sorted the products in each product line in decreasing order of total inventory. Your boss would also like to only list those products with a minimum quantity in stock. Provide a report parameter to limit the output to those products with a quantity in stock greater than that specified in the report parameter. Add a Pie chart to this report to list products and their inventory.

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Charting in Your Report

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Start with the Product Listing report. Select Product Line grouping row Insert row below titles Merge cells Insert chart Select Pie chart, SVG output Inherit data from container Category Product Name, group; Value Quantity In Stock, aggregate by Sum() 9. Format chart

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Charting in Your Report Final Output

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Lesson 3 Scripting in a BIRT Report

Objectives:  To build simple expressions for highlighting  To build JavaScript scripts

2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0 | Date | Other Information, if necessary

Scripting
 For some logical calculations and report-centric tasks, a JavaScript based scripting engine has been embedded into BIRT.  Report events can be overridden to implement custom actions, such as creating calculated fields on row retrieval from a dataset.  Variables can be declared and used persistently throughout reports through scripting mechanism.  http://birtworld.blogspot.com/2006/03/java-and-session-objectsin-birt.html  Later presentation more focused on Scripting: Advanced BIRT Report Customization tell Virgil and Jason that I sent you ;)

Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Scripting Background
 Do you know Javascript?

 Do you know Java?

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

BIRT

Awesome!

BIRT Utilizes the Mozilla Rhino Javascript engine. All the features of JavaScript 1.5 BIRT Script allows for use of Java classes and methods (regular expression, searches, etc) as well as custom Java objects Event Handlers can be external Java objects, not just Javascript

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Simple, 1 line expressions Used in data elements to return single result Used in visual elements as a simple condition or to retrieve display values

Triggered by Events in BIRT onOpen onRender Fetch Complex, multi line statements Contain advanced logic to manipulate BIRT elements Can reference and set external elements Can invoke external Java objects

2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0 | Date | Other Information, if necessary

Demo Expressions
Scenario: Ernie wants a Employee Sales Performance Report. Have a chart to show employee sales against a quota, and create a computed column for grouping. Objective: Demonstrate basic expression in Data Elements, complex expressions in the computed column and groupings.

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Scripting/Event Handling (Simplified)

Handlers are called for particular events Handlers are methods Code to do task is placed in the method Can be externalized in Java objects http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/deploy/reportScripting.p hp#javaevents

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Using Java Scripted Data Source

Scenario: A request has come through from the Java developers to create a method to list all the Java environment variables to assist in application development. Objective: Give a quick overview of the Scripting event model by creating a scripted data source.

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Using Java Scripted Data Source

 Create a scripted data source object  Create a scripted data set
  3 data fields: Name, Value, Type In Open Method  Assign the Packages.java.lang.System.getProperties() to a variable.  Get iterator from the entrySet().iterator() method. In Fetch Method while (propIter.hasNext()) { entry = propIter.next(); row['propName'] = entry.getKey(); row['propValue'] = entry.getValue(); return true; } return false; Add data grid

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Lesson 4 Libraries and Templates

Objectives:  To use & build BIRT Report Libraries in building reports To use & build BIRT Report Templates

2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0 | Date | Other Information, if necessary

Basic Concepts - Libraries

 Enables collaboration in report development, speeds up report design
 Large #s of report developers, or, large #s of reports  Many designs use same elements, or layouts

 Stores report items shared between multiple developers/reports  Use multiple libraries in a report design  Changes to report items in library reflected in all report designs
 Open design in designer  Generate report

   

Group related styles into a theme Can convert a report design into a report library File extension - .rptlibrary Define resource folder location in Window->Preferences->Report Design->Resource

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Using a BIRT Library

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Create BIRTLib.rptlibrary to Workspace Refresh project Open BIRTLib.rptlibrary Publish library to resource folder Copy visual items to report editor Copy data sets to report Outline view Preview Change a report item in library Preview

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Basic Concepts Templates

      Serve as starting points for speedy report development Template captures visual relationships of report items Degree of completed template depends on requirements Can use report libraries in template Design of template is similar to report design Define template location in Window->Preferences->Report Design->Template

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Creating a Template

1. 2. 3. 4. Create New Template in similar fashion to a report design Specify display name, description, image Design template just as a report design Register Template with New Report wizard

5. Open existing report. 6. Save as Template.

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Lesson 5 Deploying with the Web Viewer

Objectives:  To deploy BIRT Reports in Tomcat Discuss other Deployment Options

2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0 | Date | Other Information, if necessary

Traditional Report Deployment Strategies

 Burst reports
 Took lots of resources

 Online Reports
 None BI based solutions  Cumbersome and time consuming to develop  Error prone  No consistent interfaces

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Online Report Deployment

 Using BI Based Solutions
 Rapid Deployment  Available to global audience  Ability to deploy to a number of commonly used formats

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

BIRT Deployment Capabilities

 From the Designer
 HTML  MS Office Formats  (Note: Excel not yet included)  PDF  Postscript

 From the web viewer

 HTML  Real-time navigation  CSV  PDF

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

More advanced Deployment Options

 Beyond scope of this class
 Report Engine embedding into Java applications  See later tutorial: Integrating Reporting into your Application and tell Scott I said Hi.  Chart Engine Navigation  See tomorrows talk: BIRT Chart APIs  Advanced Report Design Retrieval methods  Retrieve from archive  Retrieve from Database  Remote File System Retrieval  SSH  FTP  SMB/CIFS

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

The BIRT Web Viewer Example Application

 Good starting point for deploying online applications
 Does most of the important functions that online report viewers need      Table of Contents Pagination and Navigation Export for Print, PDF, Word, Excel Export to CSV for resorting and manipulation of numbers Parameters through internal and external parameter pages

 Deploys to J2EE containers

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

BIRT Web Viewer Available From

 BIRT Runtime Package
 Contains all libraries already

 BIRT Eclipse Designer

 Contains all packages needed for web viewer  Needs to be copied among different packages

 Compiled from Source

 Download Source from CVS  Modify source as needed and compile to deploy

 New in BIRT 2.2, New Project

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Deploying Reports to the Web Viewer application

 Copy files over to the Documents folder  Accessed using the __report URL parameter  Subsequent parameters can be called via the parameter dialog, URL parameter passing, or through external FORMS

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Demo Deploying to the Web Viewer application

 Deploying Report
 Copy report into working directory  Run the example report

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

BIRT Project Summary

 Top level Eclipse project  100% Java, Open Source, powerful, extensible reporting technology  Easy to use, with a web centric design metaphor  Supported by an active community  Open source and free, with a commercial friendly license  Getting started & learning more:
 My blog: http://digiassn.blogspot.com  BIRT pages on Eclipse Web site http://www.eclipse.org/birt  BIRT pages on Actuate Web site http://www.actuate.com/birt  BIRT related blog http://birtworld.blogspot.com  BIRT Newsgroup news://news.eclipse.org/eclipse.birt

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Basic BIRT | Report Design | 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0

Q/A

2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0 | Date | Other Information, if necessary