BIRT Exchange Forum: BIRT Exchange Forum -> Michael's BIRT Blog

This blog series takes a look back at the past week in the forums, recalling how active they were and highlights some of the questions asked that seem to frequent the forums or other interesting topics. There seemed to be a little bit of a lull in traffic this past week. That's probably a good thing, because I was out of town the last half of the week. I know if everyone else's weather is anything like the weather here, in Kansas, people are probably running off to vacation, in a cool place! :) Keep the good questions and answers coming. As always, thanks to those users who help answer questions! It is a great help to the community!

The unanswered post, from last week, that I'll cover, is about using a JAX-WS (axis 2) data source, with BIRT. The poster is currently running into issues with getting the schema from the response, while using Geronimo. If anyone has set something like this up or has any web services wisdom to pass along, please post in the thread.

The next topic I'll discuss is about using lots of data in a scatter plot. The poster was having troubles plotting the data they had. Using a line chart, they ended up with weird straight lines running across the chart where they shouldn't be. With this happening, they turned to a scatter plot, but the smallest size of marker was too big to show the intricate details of the plot, as there was lots and lots of data and multiple series close together. A solution is provided that shows the output of using a 1 pixel image as the marker with the size set at 0. With this setting, the marker truly is a 1 pixel dot, which allows the plot to render clearly, even with lots of data. The poster ended up using a different route, that required more work, to get around the issue. Their solution is detailed step by step, in the thread.

The last topic, for this week, is about using row data to auto-fill values in a standard text. The poster had several rows of data and wanted to use the values from their dataSet rows to personalize a text. One solution to this is detailed in the thread. It is to use a text box in a table bound to the dataSet and use the <value-of> tag inside the HTML text box to be able to call the current row's data to complete the text. Within the table, this will dynamically fill in the appropriate information into the text, for each row.

Again, this is just a small sample of what went through the forums this past week. For more questions and answers that have been posted, check out the forums. As always, if you have a question, feel free to ask it, and if you see a question you know the answer to or have a similar experience to, feel free to post an answer or comment.

This blog series takes a look back at the past week in the forums, recalling how active they were and highlights some of the questions asked that seem to frequent the forums or other interesting topics. We've got less than 2 months left in the year. It's crazy how time flies. The traffic and increased community involvement has been awesome so far, this year, including some wonderful entries in the recent plugin contest. Let's not stop that trend! :) Many great questions and answers are being posted every day. As always, thanks to those users who help answer questions! It is a great help to the community!

For this week's unanswered post, I'll cover one about problems with parameters in a web service data source. The poster has a web service that they can get to work correctly when testing in soapUI, but when they create a dataSource in BIRT, they are not getting their SOAP parameters for the WebMethod to show up in the dataSource wizard. If anyone has experienced a similar issue and knows how to get around it or knows what might be going wrong, feel free to provide a suggestion or solution to help this community member out! Thanks!

The next topic I'll discuss for this week is about dynamically hiding columns based on a parameter. This is a common question in the forums. How can you let your user choose which columns they want to see with a parameter. In the referenced thread, there is a link to a devShare article that should help with this. Here is a link to the example:

Dynamic Columns Based on Parameter

The last topic for this week is about formatting dates in a dynamic text box. The question was initially just how to format a date within a dynamic text box. A link to another forum thread with an answer to the same question was provided. Then, it was added that the formatting in the text box must be dynamic for US or European date format. A solution is provided that shows some rough code that shows how to use a parameter to decide which format to use. This code can be seen in the example. If anyone follows the rough code in this example and creates working code, please feel free to post the working code to the example.

Again, this is just a small sample of what went through the forums this past week. For more questions and answers that have been posted, check out the forums. As always, if you have a question, feel free to ask it, and if you see a question you know the answer to or have a similar experience to, feel free to post an answer or comment.