Here are the steps covered in the post:

Steps :

(1). Create a servlet which can be invoked from a simple Java Program or any stored procedure.

(2).In this servlet, run the report through ReportEngine API and generate a temp pdf of report

(3). Print this generated pdf through Java and delete it.

Summary of Article: BIRT was made for business reports, but that doesn't mean you can't use it for creating plots of scientific data. Learn how to use BIRT for scientific purposes by creating two plots: one of the magnitude of a variable star and one of the number of sunspots per year.

It’s easy to become frustrated when debugging JavaScript code in BIRT report designs.  One little typo can mess up your whole function or event handler.  Luckily, the exception messages have steadily improved in BIRT, giving the developers a better clue as to where to look for the problem.

Recently, a JavaScript debugger was included with BIRT, and that can help in some situations.  However, I found it a little too buggy to work with sometimes.  It doesn’t really work well with external js files and doesn’t always recognize global variables.

Logging continues to be the best way to output variable values and other messages during runtime.  However, sometimes, it’s a little tiresome to switch back and forth between the designer and your text editor to view the log file.  Not to mention having to search the log file for the messages you outputted for that particular time of running.  Also, depending on how you implemented your logging, a new log file might be created each time you run the report, which will require you to open a new file every time.

(Don’t get me wrong, logging should be a part of every report design.  Perhaps I will cover this in more detail on a future blog posting.)

This blog posting shows a way to create a “Debug Window” in Eclipse that the report can “output” to while running.  This is a quick and easy way to display messages inside the Designer using a JavaScript function call.  This function will open a “JFrame” inside of Eclipse and print a message to it.

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Continued at http://bit.ly/9HfBKA

Le BIRT Expert

XML/A is an open standard developed to allow uniform access to multi-dimensional data stores.  It uses MDX as the query language.  XML/A is uses standard SOAP web services for communication, and may require some additional front-end components for the data source to be used as the SOAP endpoint.  For example SAP will require the NetWeaver Application Server, Analysis Services will require the msmdolap.dll ISAPI filter to be deployed to a trusted IIS.

The connector is built using an older, pre-open source specification of the Open Data Access framework.  As such the data connector is only valid on Actuate products, and will require an Actuate license to use.  It is capable of working with all the products in the Actuate product line including: BIRT, BIRT Studio, Information Objects, BIRT Spreadsheet and Actute eReports.

To use the connector, unzip to your <ACTUATE_HOME> folder.  By default the configuration files, assume an installation path of C:\Program Files\Actuate10.  if this is not your installation path, you will need to modify the <ACTUATE_HOME>\oda\odaconfig.xml and <ACTUATE_HOME>\oda\runDesigner.cmd files and update the path references accordingly.

Once deployed, you will need to restart the Actuate component in question (BRDPro, iServer, etc) and XML/A Data Source will appear in the list of available Data Sources / Connections.  The soap endpoint will be host.  Click connect to get a list of Catalogs.  Select a Catalog, then enter your MDX Query on the Query tab.

Any portin of the MDX query can be parameterized using the following syntax:

?<parameter_name><end_delimiter>

where <end_delimiter> can be any of the following characters: <space>, ], ), }, <comma>

There are a few options you can use in the Query tab to control the ultimate output columns, and these should be experimented with.  You can flatten entire hierarchies, or automatically expand them, as well as output level numbers which could also be used for grouping purposes.  By using default row and/or column dimenion names, you can make any selected dimension an actual parameter, and ensure the output meta data will coincide with what is defined in the report at execution time.

Since reports, output data in 2 dimensions, the connector is limited to the ON COLUMNS and ON ROWS dimension selections only.  To cross multiple dimensions you can make use of the CROSSJOIN function as defined within the MDX language specification.  CROSSJOIN calls can be nested.  This will allow you to select the intersection of multiple dimensions for reporting.

This driver is stable and is currently in use in production at multiple Actuate customers today, for mission critical applications.

To do this, you open your dataCube, double click on the dimension in the groups and summaries section of the dataCube editor, Click under attribute in the group level editor where it says "Create New Attribute" and select the column you want to sort by.  This adds that field as an accessible field in your crosstab.  So, now you can go to the sorting tab of the crosstab's property editor and sort the group you added the attribute to with a sort key like:

dimension["groupName"]["dimensionName"]["attributeName"]

An example report with this done is attached.  It was designed in BIRT 2.5.2.

If you need to write a report, change the IRunAndRenderTask to one IRunTask and one IRenderTask.

More information here:

http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=msg&th=163679&start=0&

GL

Look a the last column's aggregation element