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.