Without it, this book wouldn't have been possible.
And Scott, thanks for talks about BIRT and help with presentations,
which provided a good foundation to start with.
About the Reviewer
Meenakshi Verma has been part of the IT industry since 1998. She is
experienced in putting up solutions across multiple industry segments using
Java/J2EE technologies. Meenakshi has been helping with technical reviews for
books published by Packt publishing across varied enterprise solutions. She is
currently based in Toronto, Canada and is working with a leading North American
Consultancy organization.
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Introduction 5
Introduction to Business Intelligence 6
The Current State of the BI Market 7
The Need for Open-Source Reporting 8
What is BIRT 10
The Origins of BIRT 11
Features of BIRT 12
Eclipse Framework 14
BIRT Distributions 16
Why BIRT? 16
Conventions Used in This Book 17
Summary 17
Chapter 2: Installing BIRT 19
Requirements 19
Where Do I Get BIRT? 20
Installing BIRT from the All-in-One Installation 21
Installing BIRT All-In-One under Linux 23
Installing iText for PDF Support 25
Installation of BIRT through the Eclipse Plug-in Update Program 25
Summary 31
Chapter 3: The BIRT Environment and Your First Report 33
A Basic Scenario 33
The BIRT Perspective 34
The BIRT Workbench 35
The Navigator 36
The Outline 37
The Palette 39
Table of Contents
[ ii ]
The Data Explorer 40
Property Editor 41
Report Designer 42
Setting up a Simple Project 44
Creating a Simple Report 46
Summary 52
Chapter 4: Visual Report Components 53
Adding Labels 54
Adding Images 56
Using Text and Dynamic Text 58
Adding Grids 63
Summary 68
Chapter 5: Working with Data 69
BIRT Data Capabilities 69
Understanding the Data Components of BIRT 70
The Data Source 71
The JDBC Data Source 76
Data Sets 80
Data Set for Flat Files 86
Tables 90
Creating Tables Using Drag and Drop 91
Creating Tables Manually 95
Groups 98
Lists 100
Aggregation 100
Table of Contents 104
Crosstab 106
Summary 113
Chapter 6: Report Parameters 115
Why Parameterize Reports? 115
Data Set Parameters and Report Parameters 116
Getting Input from the User 117
Creating Parameter Binding the Easy Way 122
Dynamic Report Parameters and Filters 124
Cascading Parameters 128
Parameter Grouping and Reports with Multiple Parameters 134
Summary 134
Chapter 7: Report Projects and Libraries 135
Report Projects 135
Creating New Report Projects 136
Table of Contents
[ iii ]
Importing and Exporting Report Projects 139
Other Project Options 144
Libraries 152
Creating a New Library 153
Adding Components to a Library 154
Adding a Visual Element to a Library 156
Using Components Stored in a Library 159
Updating Components in the Library to Update Reports 163
Adding Existing Components in Reports to Libraries 167
Summary 169
Chapter 8: Styles, Themes, and Templates 171
Style Sheets 172
Custom Style Sheets 175
Editing Style Sheets 179
Alternating Row Colors Using Highlights 181
Creating Themes 185
Using External CSS Style Sheets 187
Importing CSS Files 189
Using CSS as a Resource 196
Templates 198
Building a Report from a Template 198
Creating a Template 200
Summary 203
Chapter 9: Charts, Hyperlinks, and Drill-Downs 205
Pie Chart 205
Modifying Chart Properties 210
Using Percentages 212
Gauge Chart 216
Bar Chart 225
Summary 233
Chapter 10: Scripting and Event Handling 235
Types of Scripting 236
Expressions 236
Using Expressions in Data Elements 238
Calling Java Objects in Expressions 241
Event Handling 241
Contexts 244
Adding Elements to Reports 246
Removing Elements from a Report 247
Adding Sorting Conditions 247
Table of Contents
[ iv ]
Scripted Data Source 249
Using Java Objects as Event Handlers 251
Summary 253
Chapter 11: Deployment 255
BIRT Viewer 255
Installing Reports into the Web Viewer 258
Accessing Reports in the Web Viewer 258
Command-Line Tools 260
Report Engine API 263
Outputting to Different Formats 267
Summary 268
Chapter 12: Practical Example??” Building Reports for Bugzilla 269
The Environment 269
Requirements 270
Create the Libraries 271
First Report??”Bug Detail Report 273
Bug Status 280
Developer Issues Reports 284
Summary 291
Conclusion 291
Index 293
Preface
BIRT, which stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, is an Eclipse-based
open-source reporting system for Java and J2EE-based web applications.
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