BIRT-ing Out Loud

The BIRT Mobile Viewer is now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch (Download from iTunes). This viewer empowers users to take the power of BIRT content with them wherever they go. Any BIRT-based content; anywhere you are. Powered by the Actuate iServer, your BIRT content is presented with speed and fidelity.

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.

One of the nice benefits of the BIRT Exchange Marketplace is that it is a great showcase for some really cool things you can do with BIRT. The BIRT Mashboard is an excellent example of how BIRT can be leveraged in rich information applications to create world class solutions. This fully featured app is designed for managers who need to make decisions based on varied cuts of business data. Specifically, the BIRT Mashboard allows executives to create their own custom dashboards and data visualizations with interactive drill-down capabilities.

The BIRT Mashboard starts with a blank canvas that can be populated with pre-defined controls called portlets to construct a page of interactive BIRT charts, tables, graphs and other data elements that describe your (and others’) data. No programming knowledge is required to make the page – just drag and drop portlets from a palette to the canvas and it just works. Once these portlets are placed on the canvas, they adapt dynamically to each other based on the user’s actions.

As an example, let’s say that three portlets exist on your canvas, the first is a pie chart that divides your company’s total sales by region, the second is a table that lists total sales by product line and a third is a map that marks each of your sales offices worldwide. Since the portlets communicate, you can click on one of the regions in the pie chart and the table next to it changes from showing a global representation of product line sales to just the data for that region. The map also shifts from a world view to show a regional view – plus, in this example, adds pins for each customer located there. Clicking on one of those pins then pops up a list of your products purchased by that customer as well as a contact name and phone number.

The BIRT Mashboard comes with some predefined portlets and more can be created by developers and analysts. These portlets are able to pull data from many different sources (internal and external) and inter-portlet communication is managed by simple javascripting. Once created, these portlets can be reused across many custom dashboards and reports, and security and scalability is ensured by Actuate’s backend iServer technology.

Note that you can present content built in BIRT and served by the iServer right alongside any other web accessible content too. The BIRT Mashboard allows you full control of your own application experience. Whether that content is built inside BIRT or not, the BIRT Mashboard brings it all together in a cohesive easy-to-use interface.

I encourage you to take a look at the Overview video (under the BIRT Mashboard demo tab) and then download the app and try it out. You can find 6 separate ten minute how-to videos (also under the demo tab) to help you get started.

Don’t have an iServer? No problem, you can get a free trial version of iServer Express from BIRT Exchange or even better, choose the 1 Click Install option for BIRT Mashboard and open a free account on the new BIRT onDemand service which will set up and pre-configure everything you need at no cost to evaluate the BIRT Mashboard on our servers.

And please don’t forget to let us know what you think of the BIRT Mashboard or any other apps you evaluate on the BIRT Exchange Marketplace by adding your comments under their corresponding review tabs.

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.

Actuate BIRT in version 11 has a new Excel emitter that creates analysis ready live Excel spreadsheets. I have created a few videos to highlight some of the enhancements: 

Live Excel Formulas – BIRT exports calculated fields and aggregations as Excel formula and functions that enables users to perform “what-if” analysis within spreadsheet. Watch video 

Editable Charts – BIRT charts are now converted to live Excel charts with an associated data sheet containing the underlying data that could be edited to see how data changes reflects back in the chart. Watch video 

Pivot Tables – BIRT crosstabs are exported as pivot tables containing the underlying data for further analysis. These pivot tables can be used to analyze the data based on different dimensions or to perform what-if analysis by altering the underlying data sheet. Watch Video 

Images – The enhanced Excel emitter also adds support for images in the Excel output. Watch Video 

Export Objects – Export the entire BIRT output to Excel or choose a specific table, chart or crosstab to export. Watch Video

To download the Actuate 11 milestone builds visit http://www.birt-exchange.org/wiki/Actuate_11/

One of the strongest features of BIRT is the ability to extend BIRT in order to support very specific requirements. These BIRT extension points support building your own custom report items, charts, output types, functions, and even custom editor pages. There is a nice article on building your own extension here if you are interested.

This week in the BIRT Exchange Marketplace, a couple of items were submitted that will make building your own extensions quite a bit easier. These free libraries were jointly created by Innovent Solutions and Blackboard Inc. and serve as example BIRT extensions as well as best practices for anyone developing their own BIRT extensions.

The examples I downloaded and tested were:

• BIRT Controls Library - This library uses the ReportItem extension point and includes two example controls, the DotBar control and a RotatedText control.  This example was easy to install and use by following the directions with the download at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/marketplace/app-showcase/?app=22.  There are screenshots of these controls and a video showing them in use at the same link.
• BIRT Functions Library - This library uses the Aggregate and Script Function extension points and includes examples that allow you to create your own summarized total functions as well as how to make custom JavaScript functions available to BIRT scripting. Instructions to install this library, plus screenshots can be found at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/marketplace/app-showcase/?app=24

Today, Actuate announced a contest to build the coolest app, solution or component with BIRT and Adobe technologies.

The press release describes the details and prizes of the contest. Some helpful resource pages are provided with integration points between the two technologies.

I think the combination of these two powerful RIA technologies will result in something spectacular. How could it not? Integrating the best of Flex into BIRT, or the best of BIRT into Flex is going to make something zing. The creativity of developers today is off the charts, as well as their skills. I can’t wait to see what happens.

Come showcase your talent, get tons of free marketing opportunities for your creation, and win some money.
Fame, free distribution, and fortune. I think you can handle that…

I want to thank everyone who participated this year in making BIRT Exchange the most active online BIRT-related community in the world!

I’m looking forward to 2010. You can expect some exciting things to happen in and around BIRT Exchange.

First of all, we have plans in place for improvements to the BIRT Community site that should be rolled out during the next few months:

• improved home page featuring a better layout with links to additional content
• more BIRT-related blogs and bloggers
• enhancements to search to help locate interesting things more easily
• member recognition capabilities to show off those who are top contributors and leaders in the BIRT Exchange community
• social networking feeds
• . . . and lots more!

I’m planning to host periodic live chats with developers, BIRT evangelists and community folks by using a free on-line service to exchange ideas, ask questions and meet some of the folks who are active on BIRT Exchange (I’m currently evaluating TalkShoe). I have no dates set yet, but the first one will probably occur sometime during the first quarter of 2010.

Other things you may find of interest:

Paul Bappoo and Ben Best have plans underway to start the first BIRT User Group (BUG) in London, England. The date is set for January 28th and the location and time will be determined soon. If you’re interested in participating, please register at the birt-reporting.com site.

Jason Weathersby has a webinar titled Integrating BIRT within your Applications coming up on January 26th at 9am Pacific time.

Courtney Claussen at Sybase has posted an overview of BIRT that they’ve just included as part of their IQ product suite. Check it out.

Actuate is sponsoring Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and pages. Friend/fan/follow them (and search #birt on Twitter) to keep up with the latest news about BIRT and BIRT Exchange.

Keep your eyes on the App Showcase on the BIRT Exchange Open Marketplace. More apps are added every week and it’s a great place to find cool things developers have done with BIRT for sale or free download. Add one yourself to show your own BIRT prowess and/or make some money.

Oh… and don’t forget December’s DevShare Contributor of the Month Contest. There is still time to submit your entry to win an iPod, BIRT books or a cool sound activated “BIRT Rocks!” light-up T-shirt! There are not many entries this month (note that Actuate employees are ineligible), so your chances of winning are pretty good.

I wish you all the best for this holiday season!

-Ray

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/

Actuate 10 has been officially released and I’ve seen several announcements about it. This online article called Actuate 10 Extends Open Source BIRT for Any Deployment lists several business benefits for using Actuate 10, and this article called Sex, Rock and Roll, and Open Source Reporting Frameworks shows some of the exciting visual features of Actuate 10. While both of those articles are worth reading, I thought I would do a quick post on what Actuate 10 means from a developers perspective.

From my perspective as a developer, I am usually interested in something if it makes my job easier, saves me time or money, helps me solve a tough problem, or is just down-right cool.  Actuate 10 has several new features that fall into these categories and that benefit developers as I’ve outlined below.

First of all, Actuate 10 is a Business Intelligence platform for creating Rich Information Applications and consists of many tools and various levels of features and functionality.  I’m only going to talk about some of the features that apply directly to developers and are available for download on BIRT Exchange. You can see the full list of features available and download product datasheets from the Actuate 10 resources page or the Actuate 10 Technical Summary of New Features document.

Actuate BIRT Designer - If you are familiar with the open source Eclipse BIRT Designer, then you have a pretty good understanding that this is the feature-rich environment for creating report designs.  The Actuate BIRT Designer extends the open source designer and includes several new features like over 250 Flash Charts and Gadgets, Flash maps, and the ability to include a custom Flash object with a report. Actuate BIRT also includes bundled data drivers for most popular databases, a new auto-suggest parameter, and the ability to easily include HTML buttons directly onto a report.  Developers that license Actuate BIRT can deploy their report designs for one application using the Actuate BIRT Viewer described below.

Actuate Java Components - There are several other features you can integrate into your applications that have been grouped together into a download called the Actuate Java Components.  These features include an integrated JavaScript API allowing you to easily add BIRT reports to any web page, a report browsing feature, an enhanced web viewer for end-users, and a web based BIRT report designer for end-users. A couple of these features are listed below.

Actuate BIRT Deployment Kit - This feature provides file/folder browsing of BIRT reports and configurable caching options

Actuate BIRT Viewer - This AJAX enabled web viewer makes it extremely easy to integrate BIRT reports into web applications and supports both Actuate BIRT report designs that include Flash and Eclipse BIRT report designs. The Actuate BIRT Viewer also provides progressive viewing, has a handy security extension making it easy to interface with your web security architecture and helps control and cleanup temp files.

Actuate BIRT Interactive Viewer - This viewer introduces AJAX to any BIRT report design allowing the end-user to customize the report including the ability to filter report data, change grouping levels, modify charts, etc.  For Actuate 10, the Interactive Viewer gets a brand-new streamlined look so rather than a large toolbar full of options, the various features available to users in supplied in context menus when needed. Each report you create will now extend its usefullness when the user can make his/her own changes.

Actuate BIRT Report Studio - This component allows you to add an ad-hoc report designer to your application.  As a devloper, you simply provide controlled access to the data in a report template that defines the starting point and the end-users create their own report directly in the browser.

Actuate iServer Express - This BIRT report server provides additional features for your application including report sheduling, job/process monitoring, notifications, email delivery, and built-in security that can integrate with your existing security model and provides single-sign-on support so users application credentials are passed in seamlessly. The iServer Express also include a rich web services API allowing you to control report generation and management programatically and the iServer Express can also be accessed directly inside the Actuate BIRT Designer allowing your to upload/download report designs directly from the designer bypassing the web interfaces of the iServer Admin Console and saving you time.

Use this link to download trial versions of Actuate 10.

UPDATE: The link above has changed… new links are below

To download trials of Actuate BIRT Designer Pro, use this link:

http://www.birt-exchange.com/downloads/birt-report-designers/

To download trials of the BIRT Deployment Kit (Actuate Java Components) or iServer Express, use this link:

http://www.birt-exchange.com/downloads/birt-report-deployment/