Computer applications in the modern
enterprise
Επιχειρησιακές Εφαρμογές Η/Υ
Lectures 10-13: Business Intelligence and
Enterprise Reporting
Univ. of the Aegean
Financial and Management Engineering Dpt
Petros KAVASSALIS
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
1
What you will learn in this course

A set of fundamental concepts and frameworks for understanding the
potential impact of information technology (IT) on business strategy and
structure




Information Systems in practice: How does the modern enterprise use
“Business Intelligence” (BI) systems to improve decision-making



Computers and Information Systems (IS)
The business value chain
Business integration through Enterprise Application Integration
Methods and BI examples
“Hands-on” experience: create business reports by using Eclpise BIRT Reporting Tool
(http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/)
The design and governance of digitized processes


Business Function and Processes
Transfer a real world business process to an e-business world*** (Guest Speakers)
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
2
Communication tools


e-mail: pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr
Course web site: see FME web site
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
3
Students evaluation

Class Participation (20%)
+

Assignments (20%)
+

Final Exam (650%)
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
4
http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/reporting/definition.html
Enterprise Reporting: definition

Τhe regular provision of information to decision-makers
within an organization to support them in their work. These
reports can take the form of





Graphs
Text
Tables
Typically, are disseminated through the Web as a set of
regularly updated documents or web pages (publised in the
"enterprise portal").
Alternatively, they may be emailed directly to users or simply
printed out and handed around…
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
5
Enterprise Reporting: typical examples







Dashboards
KPI (Key Performance Indicators)
Alerting / Risks Identification
Trend Analysis
Benchmarking
…
OLAP cubes

http://training.inet.com/OLAP/slicing.htm
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
6
Eclipse BIRT Reporting Tool

Open Source Reporting Tool

BIRT has two main components
o
o
o

A report designer based on Eclipse
A runtime component that you can add to your app server
(BIRT also offers a charting engine that lets you add charts to your own
application)
There are several Reporting Tools




Oracle
IBM
Microsoft
Open Source
o
Please locate and report to me about similar to BIRT Reporting Tool
commercial or open source software
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
7
The anatomy of a BIRT Report

Data


Data Transforms


Reports present data sorted, summarized, filtered and grouped to fit the
user's needs. BIRT allows sophisticated operations such as grouping on
sums, percentages of overall totals etc
Business Logic


Databases (and web services, Java objects etc.)
Many reports require business-specific logic to convert raw data into
information useful for the user.
Presentation


Once the data is ready, BIRT provides a wide range of options for presenting
it to the user: tables, charts, text and more.
A single data set can appear in multiple ways, and a single report can present
data from multiple data sets.
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
8
How to use BIRT to create a Report
http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/tutorial/basic/







Introduction
Creating a Report
Brief UI Tour
Building a Data Source
Building a Data Set
Building a Table
Testing Your Report







Setting Visual Properties
Setting Data Properties
Using Styles
Cascading Styles
Using a Grid
Using a Text Item
Next Steps
My first Report (from BIRT web site):
http://download.eclipse.org/birt/downloads/examples/reports/2.1/tutorial/tutorial.html
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
9
The 3 key functions

Data Source (db)
Data Set
Report Layout

Overview of BIRT Reporting System


Report Layout
(presentation)
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
Data Set
(processing)
Data Source
10
Data Source = Database



You can “easily” integrate a database in “BIRT” application
BIRT from http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/ is coming with a Sample
Database
BIRT provided by the course, too!
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
11
Data Set_Preview Results
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
12
Data Set_SQL Query Builder
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
13
Data Set_SQL Query
[http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp]
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
14
Report layout

Please see Exercises 1-6
<pkavassalis@atlantis-group.gr>
15