Technologies information: BIRT

The business intelligence and reporting space is focused on tools and capabilities that extract data from data sources, process that data, and present the processed information to the end users. The information may be needed to enable the users to perform their operational or analytical job functions, or it may be customer-centric information such as a transaction statement. The capabilities can range from application- and production-level reporting, through ad hoc user-driven query tools, to highly interactive multi-dimensional online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining tools.reporting applications access operational data sources, it is often the case that developers provide specific data warehouses to support the business intelligence and reporting needs of an application. The tools in this space can include facilities to help build these data warehouses.

BIRT -Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools .BIRT Designer Version 2.6.1

BIRT Architecture

BIRT features

Execution & Output Generation Services

The BIRT Engine and its APIs allow Java application developers to quickly integrate powerful report generation capabilities into their applications without having to build the infrastructure from lower level Java components. It includes Java classes that execute a report and generate the output within the context of an application. It includes a sample BIRT Viewer that encapsulates the APIs for viewing an HTML report.

Multiple Use Paradigms

Eclipse BIRT Engine and its APIs can be downloaded in open source form from eclipse.org and BIRT Exchange for embedding in custom applications. They are also available on BIRT Exchange encapsulated in report designer, component, viewer, deployment and report server products that provide additional value-added features.

Actuate BIRT iServer

BIRT iServer provides enterprise-class services that deploy, manage, schedule, secure, run and distribute BIRT documents and web pages.

Eclipse Sample BIRT Viewer

The Sample Viewer that comes with the Eclipse BIRT Engine and Java API’s is a sample implementation of the BIRT Engine in a web application. It can retrieve HTML report content and data, display that content page-by-page in a web-based viewer and generate a table-of-contents for a more manageable user experience. It will also generate a PDF version, print, and export to CSV.

Web-based design metaphor

BIRT Designers use the drag and drop, design paradigm of familiar development tools such as Web-page designers, and web-band
desktop publishing products for easy report development.

Wizards, editors and builders

BIRT Designers offer task-specific editors, builders and helpers such as wizards and cheat sheets that make it easy for developers of all
skill levels to create reusable templates and reports.

Component-based model for reuse

BIRT Designers support component and design template reuse.

Extensible and flexible data access and handling

BIRT Designers efficiently integrate data from multiple data sources, transform the data and manipulate the data based on business logic.

Standards-based programmability

BIRT Designers offer programmatic control using standard languages and interfaces for nearly every aspect of report layout, data access,
data transformation and report rendering.

Localization and i18n

BIRT Designers can create reports in a variety of languages and are available in different languages.

Many Report Types

BIRT Designers support many report types.

Lists, Grouped Lists, Charts, Crosstabs, Dashboards, Letters and Documents.
Top and Bottom Reports – determines report contents based on absolute rankings or percentages.
Compound Reports – combines different report types in one report, such as crosstabs and lists.

Data Formulas and Display Options

BIRT Designers provide a variety of functions to perform on data and to determine how it is displayed.

Sorting, grouping, filtering.
Aggregates – sum, running sum, look-ahead aggregates.
Functions – average, minimum, maximum, count, count distinct, and many more.
Page level Variables – to compute and display page level aggregations.
Duration script functions in Expression builder – to manipulate Duration data (which is typically used to denote time intervals).
Crosstab Hierarchy Creation – creates date and time hierarchy for crosstab reports automatically.

Images, Graphs and Charts

Interactive charts, graphs and images are supported by BIRT Designers.

Grids and Tables.
Images – static, dynamic from a database, from URLs, and conditional.
Charts – bar, line, pie, scatter, stock, meter, 3D, area, bubble, difference, Gantt, tube, cone, polar / radar, study and pyramid.
Multiple Chart Overlays – displays charts on top of each other to compare, contrast and analyze.
Clickable Charts – allows the triggering of custom actions from within a chart.
Granular Chart Element Control – backgrounds, axes, series, and legends including series-specific features such as pie
slice explosion and curve fitting.

Navigation

Reports designed with BIRT Designers are interactive, with links between reports, within reports and to external resources.

Dynamic Hyperlinks – links between bookmarks within a report, other reports, or external resources.
Table of Contents – links from the Table of Contents to report areas.

Parameterization

BIRT Designers create reports whose data, format and behavior can be determined by parameters provided by other programs and end users.

User Input Parameters – allows end users to input parameters.
Programmatic Parameters – passes parameters via a program.
Cascading Parameters – allows parameters to be specified hierarchically.
Behavior Parameters – allows parameters to control all aspects of report behavior.

Formatting

BIRT Designers produce reports that can be viewed in popular formats, are consistent across print or online media, and can
be dynamically and conditionally formatted.

Multiple Formats – paginated HTML, PDF, XLS, DOC, PPT and Postscript.
Dynamic formatting – expands size of report items to fit content.
Fixed formatting – specify fixed widths for report items.
Conditional formatting and visibility – determines report formats and elements using business logic.

New improvement in BIRT 2.6

Charting Improvements

BIRT provides a very extensible Chart Engine with support for thirteen main chart types and many subtypes. These charts can be displayed in many image formats and SVG. The engine also supports interactivity allowing such things as drill through to details, multiple hyper linking and browser side scripting. With the release of BIRT 2.6 the charting package has been further refined and enhanced.
(Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic)

Polar/Radar Chart

Extensibility is a key advantage when using any Eclipse based product, and the BIRT Chart Engine contains many extension points that allow the package to be enhanced and customized. These include adding new chart types, output formats, and data processors. The framework has been extended in this release of BIRT to better support using these extension points. Building on some of the extension points is a new Radar/Polar style chart type.

Palette Hashing

The Chart Palette has also been improved. Currently the palette supports adding custom colors, gradients, images, and positive/negative combination entries. With this release, pattern support has been added to the palette.

Pie Chart Rotation

Currently a report designer can set the start angle of a pie chart, which will dictate where the first slice of the chart will be rendered. These charts have been further enhanced to allow the direction in which the slices are rendered to be set to clockwise or counter clockwise.

Chart Background Images

Chart Background images can now be set to not repeat using standard BIRT styles.

Sort Locale and Strength

When configuring chart data in the chart builder, the designer can specify sort order and sort column on the category and optional grouping data points. This allows a chart to be grouped by one field and sorted by another. While this feature works well, in previous releases of BIRT
it was not possible to sort based on a different locale or sort strength. With this release both options have been added to chart sorting.

Outside Axis Range

When manually setting a scale for a bar/tube/pyramid/cone chart users can now select the Show values outside Axis range and a visual indicator will be rendered when series values fall outside of the axis range.

Better Cube Filter Support

When using a data cube as a data source for a chart, filters can be applied to all dimensions and measures defined in the cube. In prior versions of BIRT filtering was only available to dimensions and measures used in the chart.

Native PDF Drawing from SVG

If using the report engine API, rendering of PDF files now supports native PDF drawing commands when emitting a report that contains an SVG chart. This will result in a larger PDF, but charts will be presented in much more detail. To enable this feature simply add SVG to the supported image format string using the PDFRenderOption.

PDFRenderOption options = new PDFRenderOption();
options.setOutputFileName("output/resample/topn.pdf");
options.setSupportedImageFormats("PNG;GIF;JPG;BMP;SWF;SVG");
options.setOutputFormat("pdf");

Overridden Library Properties

BIRT provides library support for commonly used report items that need to be shared across many reports. These items can include such things as logos, data sources, charts, or standard labels. When incorporating report items provided by a library, the report designer can further customize the specific component for a particular design. In previous releases of BIRT it was not obvious which items had been modified. In the 2.6 release of BIRT, the outline view has been enhanced to give a visual indication of report items that are linked to a library which have been further customized by the report designer. In addition, in the general properties of the item, the user is given an indication as well as a revert button to remove customized properties on the report item.

Viewtime-value-of

When using a text report item, a new tag is available to allow report developers to enter expressions that are evaluated at render time. This tag (entered like <viewtime-value-of>expression</viewtime-value-of> is similar to the existing value-of tag. The value-of tag is evaluated at generation time of the report. The viewtime-value-of tag is evaluated at render time. Suppose the expression for a text report item is entered as: <VALUE-OF>new Date();</VALUE-OF>
The text element will be populated with the current date when the report is executed. If using the viewer or a run task in the Report Engine API, a report document will be created. If this report document is rendered at a later date the following expression will display the render date. <VIEWTIME-VALUE-OF>new Date();</VIEWTIME-VALUE-OF>
This feature can also be used to display pageNumber and totalPage within the report body as opposed to or in conjunction with the auto text element on the master page.

SQL Query Builder

The SQL Query Builder is now directly available without creating a connection profile. When adding a new data source, the query builder is listed as one of the data sources available. After selecting the Query Builder data source you are prompted with a list of available databases. Once you select the type of database you can then specify the specific driver and connection properties that will be used.
One of the advantages to using this driver is that the jar location of the driver is a data source property and can be changed using Property Binding or an Event Handler Script. <property name="jarList">C:\birt\mysql\mysql-connector-java-5.0.4-bin.jar</property>
After the data source is created, you create a dataset just like you would with any other BIRT data source. The editor allows graphic query creation as shown in the following image.

Designer Classpath Configuration

In prior releases of BIRT, the classloader while in the designer would search all projects within the workspace to locate a class that was used within the design. This would happen for classes invoked used in expressions or JavaScript event handlers. Event handlers written in Java where located in this fashion as well. BIRT now allows you to configure the classpath for the workspace or for the individual project. To set this preference select the window->preferences->Report Design->Classpath entry

Sorting Enhancement

BIRT provides sorting on many report items, such as tables, group sections, and crosstabs. BIRT now features the ability to set the collation strength and locale for the sorter. This same improvement is available for Charting and is described above.

Crosstab Cheat Sheet and Template

A new Report Template and Cheat Sheet are available for creating a cross tab style report.

Deploying in Tomcat

Overview

The following explains how to use BIRT reports in Tomcat. In general you have to:

Install the BIRT webviewer in Tomcat.
Export your BIRT project into a .jar file.
Move the .jar file to the birt-install-directory/WEB-INF/lib directory .
Move the report design file into the root directory of birt in tomcat .
Restart Tomcat .

Install BIRT in Tomcat

We will use a standalone Tomcat 6.0 which we assume is already installed. See Apache Tomcat Tutorial for details.

You need the "Deployment components of BIRT" http://download.eclipse.org/birt/downloads/ .
Copy the birt.war of this download into the Tomcat webappsfolder.

Tip Currently you have to install org.eclipse.commons.logging separately into Tomcat. Download this lib from http://commons.apache.org/logging/ and put the jars into the lib folder of Tomcat.
The Birt example should be available under http://localhost:8080/birt/.If you see something like this, your Tomcat an your Web Viewer should work correct.

MySQL

Data source properties for the MySQL sample database:
Driver Class: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
URL: jdbc:mysql://localhost/classicmodels
User Name: root
Password:

Data cubes

In this procedure, you set up the following items:

A data group, or dimension, containing values to use as the cross tab’s row headings.
A data group, or dimension, containing values to use as the cross tab’s column headings.
A summary field, or measure, containing aggregate values to use in the cells of the cross tab.
Data that you set up for a cross tab is stored in an entity called a cube.

In Data Explorer, right-click Data Cubes, and choose New Data Cube.
On Cross Tab Cube Builder, specify the following information:

In Name, type
Sales Cube
In Primary dataset, select Sales.
Choose Groups and Summaries.
In Available Fields, expand Sales. Drag STATE and drop it on (Drop a field here to create a group), as shown in

On Add Group, use the default group name. Choose OK.
Drag PRODUCTLINE from Available Fields and drop it on (Drop a field here to create a group). Use the default group nameCross Tab Cube Builder shows the STATE and PRODUCTLINE groups you created, as shown in figure.

TODO:ankur

Installing the BIRT Viewer in Tomcat(Complete Elaborate)

Using Tomcat

This page explains how to deploy the BIRT viewer to a Java EE container. We'll use Apache Tomcat, since it is open source and readily available. The same concepts, perhaps with different details, apply to other app servers. These instructions assume you'll install Tomcat on your own machine using the default port number of 8080.
If you don�t have Tomcat installed on your system you can download it from http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat. BIRT works with the 4.1.x and 5.5.x verisons of Tomcat.

Tomcat 6 Note:

If you are installing the Web Viewer on Tomcat 6, you will need to download the commons logging library. You can add this library to WebViewerExample/WEB-INF/lib or to Tomcat's lib directory.

Install the Viewer

Deploy the BIRT Viewer application. Follow these steps:
Download the zip file with the BIRT report engine runtime. The file is named birt-runtime-version#.zip.
Unzip the file in a staging area.
Look under the birt-runtime- directory and locate the "Web Viewer Example" directory.
Copy the Web Viewer Example directory to the webapps directory of your Tomcat installation. For ease of reference, rename the directory to "birt-viewer".
Stop, then restart Tomcat.
Display the Tomcat manager application to check that the viewer is deployed: http://localhost:8080/manager/html.
Verify that birt-viewer is listed as an application, then click on the birt-viewer link.
A page confirming that the BIRT viewer has been installed should be displayed. Click on the link labeled "View Example" to confirm that your installation is working properly.
The BIRT Viewer requires that cookies be enabled.
If you choose to put the Viewer into some other location, you'll need to use a context entry within the server.xml file to indicate the deployment location. See Tomcat documentation for details.