BIRT Exchange Forum: BIRT Exchange Forum -> BIRT Evangelist Blog

The popular Getting Started with BIRT DZone Refcard has been updated. The BIRT DZone Refcard is the 50,000 view of the BIRT project from a developers perspective. It briefly explains the BIRT project in terms of components, select capabilities and features. It's just enough information to get you interested in BIRT and just enough detail to get you started.

The latest version has been updated to support BIRT 3.7 and includes additional information on BIRT Syles, Expressions and Scripting.

Download the BIRT DZone Refcard from http://www.birt-exch...dzone-refcardz/

BIRT Exchange will once again be sponsoring the EclipseCon 2012 Developer Conference. This year the conference will be held in Reston, VA (Washington DC area) from March 26th-29th.

There are 3 BIRT Sessions in this years EclipseCon conference program:

What is BIRT? Quick Jumpstart (presented by Virgil Dodson)
This session introduces BIRT and looks at how you can leverage BIRT to quickly create data-driven reports, web pages, and compelling information visualizations using its visual drag-and-drop design environment. This session provides a great orientation to the BIRT project and technology and how it might benefit your applications.

Extending BIRT with Plug-ins (presented by Michael Williams)
This session will show off several new plug-ins created by the community from a recent BIRT plug-in contest and also show step-by-step use of the ODA wizard to create a new BIRT data source and show where to find current plug-ins in the source code to use as a starting point for creating your own BIRT plug-ins faster. Attendees will leave this talk with an understanding of BIRT plug-ins and the various ways to extend BIRT.

Introduction to BIRT (by John Ward)
This tutorial will walk users through the BIRT environment and guide them through building their first few reports using the BIRT reporting tool

BIRT and Big Data
Pick up a whitepaper in the BIRT Exchange booth with step-by-step instructions on how to connect, access and display Hadoop data using HIVE Query Language (HQL) within BIRT-based applications.

Contests and Prizes
There will be lots of random giveaways to booth visitors, and we’ll announce a developer contest where we’ll be awarding three (3) new iPads.

After the success of our recent BIRT plug-in contest, we started thinking about another contest to keep the great BIRT community contributions coming in. We wanted a contest with a low barrier of entry allowing more users of BIRT, even new ones, to get involved. What we came up with is the 'BIRT Style Contest'. The contest allows BIRT users to show off their creative side by submitting a BIRT style example to the BIRT Exchange DevShare or Marketplace.

Actuate will award a Kindle Fire to each of the best three style examples submitted to either DevShare or the BIRT Exchange Marketplace between January 9, 2012 and February 9, 2012.

Styles are used within BIRT designs allowing you to create richly formatted web content. These styles can be applied directly within the BIRT Designer, imported from existing CSS stylesheets, and referenced at runtime to match your existing web application look and feel. Styles can also be applied dynamically based on parameters or scripting creating a customized experience for the user.

Some BIRT style examples might include:

• Clever use or colors (seasons, team colors)
  
• Style applied dynamically based on time of day, or year.
  
• Style applied based on external data like weather or regional info
  
• Your unique BIRT style example

Any DevShare submission that makes use of a BIRT style will be considered for this contest.

Contest rules, details and more suggestions can be found on the Contest Details and Examples page.

I look forward to seeing some more great contributions!

There are several open positions at Actuate but a couple of these positions may be of interest to the BIRT Exchange developer community. Actuate is looking for developers who are familiar with BIRT to fill the following roles.

Marketing Applications Developer
The Marketing Applications Developer will create and maintain BIRT-based application content for demonstrations, proofs of concept, and deployment to the BIRT onDemand hosted reporting application platform and service from Actuate. This high-visibility position requires a broad base of experience in Business Intelligence, application development, Internet infrastructure, cloud deployment (in Amazon AWS) and security, application hosting and integration, and Java development. The ideal candidate will also possess deep knowledge of databases, data warehouses, BIRT, Eclipse, Actuate iServer, and its configuration and management in large-scale, highly available environments.

Customer Support Engineer
The Customer Support Engineer provides accurate, timely technical support to Actuate Software customers primarily via the telephone and E-mail. The Engineer will deal with support issues that are complex in nature, carry differing priorities and must be addressed within predetermined service levels, so the Engineer must be adept at balancing multiple priorities. In addition, the Customer Support Engineer will be handling pre-sales support calls, so must have an orientation toward sales as well. The callers will expect enterprise-level support, therefore the Engineer will need to be well-versed technically, and fully understand customer service concepts. Other objectives are to contribute to the development of the automated, self-help tools; to collect and report upon information gathered from incidents; and to interface with Sales, Marketing, QA/Test and others as necessary. In addition, a Customer Support Engineer will carry out projects as assigned by the management staff, cooperate with other Customer Support Engineers in carrying out their day-to-day duties, and represent Actuate Software in a visibly supportive manner.

If you want more information about these jobs, contact
Actuate HR: Lisa Yakushi, lyakushi@actuate.com, 650-645-3413

There are several BIRT sessions this year at EclipseCon. Below is a list of BIRT related sessions that should give anyone a jumpstart to learning BIRT. If you are attending and interested in BIRT then it is a good idea to print this page to take with you.

Monday, March 21st

What is BIRT? 20 Minute Jumpstart – Virgil Dodson (20 min) 1:00pm
https://www.eclipsec...alk.php?id=2411

BIRT for ISV and OEM Applications – Rob Murphy (20 min) 1:30pm
https://www.eclipsec...alk.php?id=2412

Reports and Charts right from your EMF models - Lothar Werzinger (20 min) 2:00pm
https://www.eclipsec...alk.php?id=2028

Getting Started with BIRT - John Ward (2 hrs) 3:40pm
https://www.eclipsec...alk.php?id=1995

Tuesday, March 22nd

BIRT to the Bare Metal: Framework and API – Jason Weathersby (40 min) 11:40am
https://www.eclipsec...alk.php?id=2015

Wednesday, March 23rd

Extending the BIRT Chart Model – Jason Weathersby (20 min) 11:10am
https://www.eclipsec...alk.php?id=2016

Thursday, March 24th

FAQ: Hands-on Tips from the BIRT Forums – Michael Williams (20 min) 1:30pm
https://www.eclipsec...alk.php?id=2413

BIRT 360 – Would Your Users Like BIRT Based Dashboards? – Mihail Mihaylov (20 min) 2:00pm
https://www.eclipsec...alk.php?id=2414

BIRT Data Analyzer – Instantly Convert your BIRT Report into an Analytic Application!! – Mihail Mihaylov (20 min) 2:30pm
https://www.eclipsec...alk.php?id=2415



We are sponsoring EclipseCon again this year so be sure to stop by and see us in the Exhibit Hall

The new accelerated BIRT roadshow series is now more technical than ever and will take you beyond the basics with BIRT. The day's content includes dynamic cascading parameters, report customization with Javascript, and how to design high-performance BIRT reports and create user-defined, highly interactive dashboards. In addition, attendees will gain a solid understanding of the BIRT event model and how it can be used to create dynamic BIRT content including chart customization and reports that can be branded for the customer.

The roadshow is free and starts next week at the locations below.

Boston, MA Tuesday | 9/14
New York, NY Wednesday | 9/15
Washington, DC Thursday | 9/16
London, UK(ISV only) Wednesday | 9/22
Bay Area, CA Tuesday | 9/28

Register early as these roadshows are expected to fill up.

Last week we recorded a webinar titled, Combining Business Process Management and BIRT for Better Business Decision-Making. In the webinar, we showed the embedded BIRT reporting found in the ActiveVOS BPMS and how to extend that reporting and analysis with Actuate BIRT technology.

View the recording at http://www.vosibilit...lts/2010/06/25/

Join me this Thursday for an online webinar with Active Endpoints Product Manager Mike Moniz and myself, BIRT Evangelist from Actuate, for an informative webinar where we will demonstrate how exposing the right data through the integration of ActiveVOS BPMS and BIRT-based rich data visualization tools can help you achieve effective business decision-making.

Sign up here

We attended the JAX 2010 Conference last week in Mainz, Germany. There really is no better place to hold a conference than along the banks of the Rhine River. It wasn’t exactly warm yet but the views from the window were great as shown below.



I was happy to have had the opportunity to talk to so many BIRT users and answer some of your questions at the Actuate booth. The iPad used for the prize draw seemed like quite the celebrity and JAX attendees got to see a sneak peek of the upcoming BIRT app for the iPad.



For those who attended the BIRT technical sessions, the examples I used during these sessions can be downloaded from the links below.
JAX BIRT Session Examples
BIRT iServer Express Trial

Next week, you can find BIRT at a couple different shows in California.

At the MySQL confernece, we will be showing BIRT technology in the exhibit hall at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2010

And at SugarCon, stop by The Palace Hotel in San Francicso, to see how BIRT can connect to SugarCRM data for some great reports and visualizations.
http://www.sugarcrm....events/sugarcon