Book Image

BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting

By : John Ward
Book Image

BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting

By: John Ward

Overview of this book

BIRT is an Eclipse-based open source reporting system for web applications based on Java and Java EE. To address a wide range of reporting needs within a typical application, ranging from operational or enterprise reporting to multi-dimensional online analytical processing (OLAP), you need to know BIRT from head to toe. If you wish to start making reports easily and quickly, and also want to be up-to-date with the latest developments in BIRT, then this book is for you. It will guide you from scratch to develop reports using the Eclipse BIRT project. You will learn how to connect to data, use report items to display and format data, and use scripting to build advanced reports and charts.The book steers you through each step of report setup, to creating, designing, formatting, and deploying reports with data from a wide range of data sources. Its focus is on familiarizing you with the most visible and familiar product built with the BIRT framework – the BIRT Report Designer. It starts by introducing the concepts of business intelligence and open source software, and different installation methods. It will introduce you to the various visual report elements that can be used to design BIRT reports, such as the Palette and Grid components. You will learn the details of the data components of BIRT (the Data Source and the Data Set), different types of source data that BIRT supports such as XML files, flat text files, and databases, and the creation of all of the elements while connecting to Data Sources in reports and Report Projects. By the end of the book, you will be able to enhance the presentation of your report using Charts, Hyperlinks, and Drill Through. You will also be able to take advantage of the scripting capabilities that BIRT has to offer with Expressions and Event Handlers and successfully deploy BIRT reports.The book includes a case study at the end along with a real-world example that runs throughout the book.

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BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting
John Ward
Jul, 2010 | 360 pages
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Table of Contents (15 chapters)
BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting
BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Getting Started
Getting Started
Introduction to BI
The current state of the BI market
The need for open source reporting
Why BIRT?
What is BIRT?
The origins of BIRT
Features of BIRT
Eclipse framework
BIRT distributions
Conventions used in this book
Summary
2
Installing BIRT
Installing BIRT
BIRT prerequisites
Where do I get BIRT?
Installing BIRT from the All-In-One package
Installing BIRT All-in-One under Linux
Installation of BIRT through the Eclipse Plugin update program
Building BIRT from source
Summary
3
The BIRT Environment and First Report
The BIRT Environment and First Report
A basic scenario
The BIRT perspective
The BIRT workbench
Setting up a simple project
Creating a simple report
The hidden views
Getting access to cheat sheets and the simple listing report tutorial within Eclipse
Summary
4
Visual Report Items
Visual Report Items
Labels
Images
Text and Dynamic Text
Grid
Aggregation
Summary
5
Working with Data
Working with Data
BIRT data capabilities
Understanding the data components of BIRT
The Data Source
XML Data Source
Flat file data adapter
Datasets
Creating data using the data store
Tables
Groups
Lists
Aggregations
Web service Data Source
Adding additional data aware components to the palette
Summary
6
Report Parameters
Report Parameters
Why parameterize reports?
Dataset parameters and report parameters
Dynamic Report Parameters and Filters
Cascading parameters
Parameter grouping and reports with multiple parameters
Setting default parameter values
Summary
7
Report Projects and Libraries
Report Projects and Libraries
Report projects
Creating new Report Projects
Importing and exporting Report Projects
Other project options
Libraries
Master Pages
Summary
8
Charts, Hyperlinks, and Drilldowns
Charts, Hyperlinks, and Drilldowns
Pie chart
Gauge chart
Bar chart
Summary
9
Scripting and Event Handling
Scripting and Event Handling
Types of Scripting
Multiselecting parameters and binding them to a dataset through Property Binding
Using the MultiSelect parameter in an Event Handler
Using the Innovent Custom Script Libraries for query binding
Summary
10
Deployment
Deployment
BIRT Viewer
Command line tools
Report Engine API
Outputing to different formats
Summary

Datasets

With all the examples discussed in earlier sections completed, we should have four Data Sources in our report. The reason we kept each of these Data Sources is to demonstrate the differences in each while setting up Datasets. As mentioned before, Datasets are basically descriptions of the data one wants to retrieve. Each type of Data Source is going to contain different Dataset types. In the following examples, we are going to create five different datasets, four of which will be based on each of the different Data Sources we have created, whereas one will be a Joined Dataset or a combination of two of the existing Datasets.

First, we are going to build a simple Dataset from the XML Data Source dsXMLEmployee. Building the XML Dataset consists of defining columns to be built and then resolving them to XML paths using XPath expressions. This can be a bit tricky if there are namespaces used in the XML file. For our example, namespaces are not used in the XML Data Source.

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