BIRT-ing Out Loud

For those of you that have been trying to integrate BIRT into JavaServer Faces (JSF) applications, the jsf4birt component library should make things easier. This library was created by Exadel and supports the rendering of BIRT-based reports on pages wthin JSF web applications.

There are two components; a birtWrapper, and actuateWrapper. 

• The birtWrapper component displays BIRT reports created in the Eclipse BIRT Report Designer. This component uses the BIRT runtime API and calls the appropriate part of the API to get generated HTML code to put on the page. Everything is done on the server side following the usual JSF lifecycle processing.
• The actuateWrapper component loads reports from an installed Actuate server. The component uses the Actuate JavaScript API to load and run BIRT reports and allows the integration of the AJAX-based BIRT Interactive Viewer.

Max Katz and I demonstrated the jsf4birt component library in an online webinar.  Watch the webinar recording here

Instructions for installing and testing the jsf4birt component can be found here

On January 26th, Jason Weathersby will present in a live webcast on integrating BIRT within your applications. This one hour presentation will take you through the various aspects of the BIRT Framework, with a particular focus on the integration and extension points available in the framework.

Topics covered include:

• BIRT Overview and Architecture - what is BIRT, high-level BIRT architecture
• BIRT Integration - using the design engine API, using the report engine API
• BIRT Deployment - deploying the AJAX-based BIRT viewer, using the APIs within a servlet, RCP engine integration

Get more information and sign up to see the webcast at http://live.eclipse.org/node/856

This Thursday, November 5th, there will be a joint webinar from RedHat and Actuate demonstrating integration between BIRT and JBoss.  The webinar will take place online and is titled, Using JBoss and BIRT to Develop and Deploy Rich Internet Applications.

If you are using JBoss and are interested in how BIRT might integrate, then attend this webinar where we will show several options.

More information can be found at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/info/birt-jboss/?tracklink

There are two webinars coming up soon that both deal with BIRT report security.

This Friday, May 15th at 9am PST, Ashwini Verma, Product Evangelist from Actuate, will discuss the security framework and extension points of the iServer Express and how to integrate it within your application to deliver reports in a secured manner.

UPDATE (5/27): This webinar was recorded and available for viewing at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/news-events/resources/?articleid=17785

---

Two weeks later, on May 29th at 9am PST, Mark Gamble, Senior Technical Marketing Manager from Actuate, will show us how the BIRT Report Security Option in Actuate BIRT is used to present different data to users depending on their access privileges from a single report instance.UPDATE (6/09): This webinar was recorded and available for viewing at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/news-events/resources/?articleid=17881

Sign up for Upcoming webinars at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/news-events/webinars/upcoming-webinars/

This Friday, May 8th, Rob Murphy from Actuate will be presenting a webcast on how to embed BIRT report content into web applications using both the open source JSP tag libraries as well as the Actuate JavaScript API.  More information on this and other upcoming webinars can be found at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/news-events/webinars/upcoming-webinars/

This Friday, April 17th, Scott Rosenbaum from Innovent Solutions, will demonstrate using the BIRT ScriptFunction extension point to create easy, reusable multi-select parameters.
Get more information and sign up for the webinar at: http://www.birt-exchange.com/news-events/webinar/designing-birt-reports/794-birt-multi-select-parameters-the-safe-and-easy-way/

This Monday, March 30th, BIRT Evangelist Jason Weathersby will present a free 30-minute webinar on deploying BIRT reports within your applications with a particular focus on integration with the report engine API and extension points available in the BIRT framework.  Get more details at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/news-events/resources/?articleid=17326

Today is the first day of the DeVoxx Developer Conference in Antwerp, Belgium. If you are attending the conference, be sure to stop by and introduce yourself. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, my time will be split between BIRT presentations at the Eclipse booth, and Actuate BIRT presentations at the BIRT Exchange booth. I am also presenting two sessions at this conference:

Mixing Excel and Java, Thursday, Dec 11, 13:10, Room 6 - This session introduces the free Excel read/write capability and the free spreadsheet report designer as part of Actuate 10

Integrating BIRT Reporting into Applications, Thursday, Dec 11, 16:40, Room 6 - This session addresses the requirements you may encounter as you build your BIRT reporting application and various ways of solving them.

For those of you not attending DeVoxx, you can see the 30 minute version of the Integrating BIRT session this Friday, December 12th, in an online webinar. This webinar will be a real test of technology as I’ll be presenting over wireless hotel internet in Belgium using Skype on the Mac for voice, and screen sharing over Live Meeting on the PC.

Tomorrow, November 19th, Actuate and IBM are co-presenting an online webinar on working with BIRT reports with IBM ClearQuest and I am doing the demo portion.  I plan to show BIRT reports inside the ClearQuest client, the ability to schedule and distribute those reports in the Actuate iServer Express, and interact with the reports using the Interactive Viewer.  There is still time to register if you want to attend.

Tomorrow, November 14th, we will be hosting a webinar on BIRT Exchange showing how to use the e.Spreadsheet Engine APIs to integrate Excel and Java.  We will discuss how simple it is to read existing Excel files into Java, write Excel files from Java, and leverage Excel formula calculations in Java.  New with Version 10 is that some of the Excel read/write functionality will be free.  The webinar is a brisk 30 minutes so plan to show up 5-10 minutes early so you don’t miss anything.

Using the e.Spreadsheet Engine APIs in Java
Nov 14, 2008 - 09:00 am PST- 30 minutes

The webinar will be recorded and available from http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/news-events/resources/?articleid=17444