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 today’s presentation?
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Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
Agenda
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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
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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
 BIRT Viewer
 Reporting Integration
 Design Engine API
 BIRT Extension
 BIRT Extension Points
 BIRT Core Development
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Hard
 Deploy Experts
 Eclipse Development
Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
BIRT Target Users & Benefits
Managers
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Embed pre-designed reports in application
Designs reports using Eclipse-based designer
Creates report libraries & templates
Java
Developers
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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
End Users
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Focused on $, developer productivity
End user satisfaction
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Minimizes Eclipse developer training
Increase developer productivity
Lower costs
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Reports that support business activities
Ever changing business requirements
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Quick availability of reports
Reports that also look good
Content as HTML and PDF
Report
Developers
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Powerful and easy to use report designer
Creates & uses report libraries & templates
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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
Report Engine
Chart
Designer
Report Design Engine
XML
Report
Design
Custom
Designer
Data
Transform.
Services
Charting
Engine
Generation
Services
Presentation
Services
Data
Data
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Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
Report
Document
HTML
PDF
Print
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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Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
Bar Charts
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Horizontal, Vertical
2D, 2D w/depth, 3D
Stacked, Side-by-side
Percent, Logarithmic
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
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Horizontal, Vertical
2D, 2D w/depth, 3D
Stacked, Side-by-side
Percent, Logarithmic
Drawn as Line, Curve
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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Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
Meter Charts
 2D, formatting control
 Regions, Needle styles, thicknesses
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Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
Gantt Charts
 2D. Custom Bar width
 Custom Start/End Markers
 Data : Task ID / Start Date, End Date, Task Name
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Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
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
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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
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BIRT
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Awesome!
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Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
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
•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
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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
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
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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
Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
Demo – Using a BIRT Library
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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
Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
Basic Concepts – Templates
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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
Basic BIRT | Report Design | © 2008 by John Ward made available under the EPL v1.0
Demo – Creating a Template
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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
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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