PacktLib: BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting

BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting

About the Author

About the Reviewers

Getting Started

Introduction to BI

The current state of the BI market

The need for open source reporting

The origins of BIRT

Features of BIRT

Eclipse framework

BIRT distributions

Conventions used in this book

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

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

Visual Report Items

Text and Dynamic Text

Working with Data

BIRT data capabilities

Understanding the data components of BIRT

The Data Source

XML Data Source

Flat file data adapter

Creating data using the data store

Web service Data Source

Adding additional data aware components to the palette

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

Report Projects and Libraries

Report projects

Creating new Report Projects

Importing and exporting Report Projects

Other project options

Charts, Hyperlinks, and Drilldowns

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

Command line tools

Report Engine API

Outputing to different formats