BIRT-ing Out Loud

The BIRT Mobile Client is a native application built from the ground-up to meet the highest standards for an iPhone-based experience. This is not another browser-based tool styled to look like an iPhone application. Built in Objective C, this application tightly integrates with the core OS. Want to initiate a phone call or an e-mail from within a BIRT report? No Problem. Want to show off your BIRT content with the best perspective? The viewer is orientation aware; the application will automatically rotate to show the content in its best light. Want to easily refresh the content list on the home page? Simply shake the device. All of this is possible through the development of a native application.

When you install the app, you will get to experiment with a set of sample content. All content built in and powered by BIRT. Search Twitter; check out the hot trends on Amazon; check out the BIRT Mobile News. All of this BIRT content is interesting, even fun, but it is only the beginning. The Mobile Client is already completely integrated to the BIRT onDemand experience. Upload a BIRT design or document to your onDemand account and quickly add it to your mobile client via the document’s context menu. Already have an iServer or iServer Express? You can deploy the Actuate Mobile Framework yourself and mobilize ANY BIRT content.

Your most important asset: Information. Why not take it with you wherever you are? Grab the power of BIRT and get going! This FREE application functions on both iPhone and iPod Touch models running at least version 3.0 of the iPhone OS. Download and install it today.

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

The RCL Master Dashboards are a collection of four BIRT templates that allow you to quickly create dashboard content to Track, Compare, Target and Measure. Since they are solutions built upon the Reusable Component Library v2.0.3 and BIRT best practices, you only have to point your data to them, and you’re done.

I think using the RCL Master Dashboards is going to save you a ton of development and testing time. It’s fun just to fold your data into them, and see the dashboard visualizations instantly populate with your data.

Both the RCL Master Dashboards and Reusable Component Library v2.0.3 can be found on the BIRT Exchange Marketplace.

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

I’ll be co-presenting a BIRT session next week at JBoss World in Chicago called “Getting BIRT-y with JBoss”.  I’ll start the session with an introduction to BIRT and then talk about using the open source BIRT Viewer in the JBoss application server… and then Prakash Aradhya from RedHat will finish the session off showing BIRT integration with JBoss Tools 3.0.

See the full conference agenda at http://www.jbossworld.com/agenda/tracks/

UPDATE: The BIRT/JBoss slides used for this presentation have been uploaded to http://www.birt-exchange.org/devshare/deploying-birt-reports/1008-using-birt-with-jboss/#description

In an effort to get continuous feedback on its BIRT-based products, Actuate is making Milestone versions available for download to anyone interested in evaluating these products. There are several new features going into Actuate 11 to help you deliver compelling BI and reporting applications. Some of the these features that have already been included in Milestones 1-6 are grouped below.

Actuate BIRT Interactive Viewer  The Interactive Viewer in Actuate 11 is faster than ever before thanks to a new meta-data caching capability and an on-demand resource loading framework. The end-user can also personalize the look and feel of crosstab components in Actuate 11 by modifying the format and alignment properties.

Actuate BIRT Data Analyzer - Actuate 11 introduces a revolutionary new BIRT based analysis tool that dramatically simplifies data analysis.The BIRT Data Analyzer is a zero footprint browser based tool to analyze personalized cubes embedded in the BIRT report itself. The analysis interface is highly intuitive making it possible for organizations to deploy analysis capability to users at all level in the organization. The following crosstab operations are available in the current milestone:

• Add, modify or remove dimensions
• Add, modify or remove measures
• Change the order of dimensions and measures

BIRT Report Studio  In Actuate 11, the BIRT Report Studio (web-based BIRT designer for end-users) will now support the Safari web browser. The rest of the Actuate 11 BIRT based products will also support Safari

Actuate BIRT Designer - Actuate 11 delivers true WYSIWYG report design experience to the BIRT report designer. This enhancement greatly improves the productivity and report development efficiency of the report developer since the report developer does not need to modify his report designs repeatedly so that the desired report layout is achieved in all the various output formats. The layout of the BIRT report output will be similar regardless of whether the report is viewed on the web or printed in the PDF format. Other features supported by the Actuate BIRT Designer include:

• Union Data Sets and Joint Data Sets - In Actuate 11, report developers can create a union of two or more data sets to create a data set similar to a UNION ALL construct in SQL… and the Joint Data Set is improved to allow for multiple datasets and join conditions.
• New ODA Driver for POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) - Actuate 11 features a new POJO ODA driver which provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface to use POJO objects as data sources in BIRT reports. Report Developers no longer need to write custom code using the scripted data source to access POJO objects. The report developer can create method-to-column mappings at design-time and the ODA driver will handle the data retrieval from a POJO object graph and map it to data set rows.

Live Excel Spreadsheets - In Actuate 11, the Excel emitter has been enhanced to create analysis-ready “live” Excel spreadsheets. This would enable report consumers to perform “what-if” analysis on the exported Excel spreadsheet. The following are the enhanced capabilities of the Excel emitter

• BIRT charts as “real” Excel charts - BIRT charts would be converted to live charts with an associated data sheet containing the underlying data.
• BIRT crosstabs to Pivot Tables in Excel  BIRT crosstabs would be exported to pivot tables containing the underlying data for further analysis.
• Maintain aggregations and calculations in Excel  BIRT would export the aggregations as Excel functions and formulas so that users could instantly see the impact of their what-if analysis in the spreadsheet. (**This features will be available in a future Milestone)
• Support for images in the Excel output - The enhanced Excel emitter also adds support for images in the Excel output.

A complete list of all the available features included in Milestones 1-6 are available at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/download/Milestone_Features_A11_M1-M6.pdf

To download the milestone builds visit http://www.birt-exchange.org/wiki/Actuate_11/

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/

For those of you that are using IBM Rational Clearquest for workflow automation, you may be aware that the reporting capability shipped with Clearquest uses BIRT reporting.  To facilitate using those same BIRT reports outside the Clearquest client, the IBM Rational team implemented the Clearquest data access using the Open Data Access (ODA) capability.  This makes the data driver portable and allows you to run your Clearquest reports along with your other reports in one central location.

Whitepaper - A whitepaper at http://www.birt-exchange.org/devshare/10/818-maximizing-reporting-capabilities-in-ibm-rational-clearquest-7-1-with-eclipse-birt-/#description provides an overview of the integration and how Actuate extends the built-in functionality.

Clearquest Driver Technical Information - The steps needed to use the Clearquest data driver externally are located at http://www.birt-exchange.org/wiki/Using_BIRT_and_Actuate_with_IBM_ClearQuest/

Webcast - On Wednesday, May 20th (12:00 PM EST), IBM and Actuate are presenting a joint webcast reviewing the BIRT integration with IBM Rational Clearquest and also showing how to Enterprise-enable the Clearquest reports to include features like scheduling, email distribution, end-user report personalization, and creating ad-hoc Clearquest reports directly in the browser.  Sign up for the webinar at http://www.rational-ug.org/webcastUpcoming#buspartner

UPDATE (5/27): The webcast was recorded and is available for viewing at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/news-events/resources/?articleid=17799

I was asked to author a developer reference card on BIRT as part of the DZone RefCardz series.  This card covers the basics from a developer’s perspective of getting started with BIRT reporting and includes information on the BIRT Designer as well as helpful information on using the BIRT Engine, Web Viewer and Tag Library. View or download the BIRT RefCard from http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/birt?oid=hom9486