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

Last Week in the Forums - 9/17/12

The first post, for this week, is about showing a default result set if the main one is empty. The poster wanted to be able to show a default table if the parameter entered by the user returned no results. An example is posted in the thread that shows how to set the visibility of the two tables based on a variable that is set in the onFetch of the parameterized dataSet.

The next post, for this week, is about how to parameterize the from portion of an SQL query. The poster wanted to be able to use a parameter value to choose which table to use in the from portion of an SQL query. The solution provided was to use the report parameter in the beforeOpen of the dataSet, like:

this.queryText = "select * from " + params["myparameter"];

Here are a few more :

• Why so many date-time datapoints on chart?
  
• how to get a chart svg output as an object
  
• Dynamic Report Based on User Selection
  
• Cant Startup the OSGI Framework in BIRT
  
• Serial number for newspaper columns

Here are a few unanswered posts, from last week:

• ClassCastException on WebLogic BEA Servers
  
• Birt Reports not working other then maxadmin user

If you have a suggestion or solution for any of these, please post in the thread!

Thanks for reading this weeks blog! 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. The forums are staying steadily busy as we push into quarter number 4. I'll be gone most of this coming week at JavaOne, so I'll be scarce in the forums. If anyone has time to step in and answer some questions, that would be helpful! :) 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!

The first topic I'll cover from the past week's posts is how to use the same masterpage across multiple reports. In many instances, your reports you make will all have the same page size and page header and footer information. Rather than making the same masterpage over and over again, BIRT allows you to store a masterpage in a report library. You can then attach this library to all of your reports and use the masterpage. If you need to make changes in the masterpage for all of your reports, you don't need to change each individually. A change to the masterpage in your library will be inherited by all reports that use this library masterpage. Another option suggested in the thread would be to create a template that has this masterpage linked in it so that the report developer has this masterpage from the start.

The second topic we'll cover this week is preventing your SQL from running when you don't display your subreport. If you have a parameter that decides whether you want to show detail information that is in a subreport, you don't have to just hide the table. If you know you want to hide a table by a parameter, you can simply drop the table from the design in your beforeFactory method and the database will not be accessed. The code to do this is shown in the forum thread.

The last topic for this week is changing the title of the report viewer. If you're looking to change the title of the BIRT viewer, you can simply use the url parameter __title to set whatever value you'd like. If you'd like another option, you can go into the viewer's FramesetFragment.jsp page and change the title value there.

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.