BIRT Exchange Forum: BIRT Exchange Forum -> BIRT Rocks!

I was awarded a speaking slot at the Eclipse Demo Camp Juno 2012 next week on Wednesday, June 13 at Oracle HQ in Redwood Shores, CA. This is a great opportunity to network and learn about various technologies that makes Eclipse a great development platform. I will give an introduction to BIRT and talk about how you can integrate it into your applications. The event is completely free to attend and snacks and drinks are provided. Sounds like fun to me, are you in?

Cick on this link to find details and register for the event

In version 11 Actuate has introduced a new dashboard application (called BIRT 360) that enables you to create your own dashboards without requiring IT intervention. This application is built as an extension to end user browser application (called Information Console) for BIRT Server and is based on the popular Google gadget framework. This allows third party Google Gadgets to be used with BIRT repots to create visually rich mashups.
Depending on the type of data and level of user interaction you want to provide, these dashboards could be operational or analytical. Operational dashboards are typically suitable for continuous monitoring of KPI's and supports interaction and drill down on individual KPI to answer any specific business question.

Analytic dashboards are suitable for visual data exploration combining a set of filter and slicer gadgets with a set of KPI's that you could use to uncover trends and perform root cause analysis.

Both type of dashboards enables you to create visually rich, dynamic dashboard using a simple web browser interface. Here is a summary of some of the key features offered in the dashboard along with a quick video for each:

• Creating and sharing dashboards - The dashboard frame allows you to use predefined dashboards, create your own dashboards and share with other users. See Video
  
• Create and sharing BIRT Gadgets - You can build new gadgets and add to the library so that they can be discovered and consumed by other users of the system. See Video
  
• Using data visualization gadget - These gadgets allows you to visualize your data as charts, gauges, tables and crosstab. See Video
  
• Data selection gadgets - These gadgets let you source input parameter data from BIRT Objects and present it in the form of lists, combo box, check box, radio button, slider, calendar etc. You can have other gadgets to update information based on selections made in these gadgets. See Video
  
• Parameter gadget - This gadget displays parameter as a new selector gadget and is derived directly from the parameters defined in BIRT report. See Video
  
• Import third party gadgets - BIRT 360 is a browser based zero foot print application based on the popular Google Gadget framework that enables it to leverage third party Google Gadgets to create mashup applications. See Video
  
• Mashup gadgets - You can link gadgets in the dashboard with other gadgets and create compelling visualizations. See Video
  
• Interact with a gadget - You can maximize the gadget to interactively analyze and modify BIRT reports within the browser environment. See Video

Download a free evaluation copy of Actuate 11 and get a 360 degree view of your data in dashboard.

Ashwini Verma

Ever wished for a BIRT input parameter with flexibility to define a conditional clause? Actuate 11 BIRT now supports dynamic parameters that allows you to define condition clause along with parameter values.

This enables you to analyze the same BIRT report without modifying the design. For example, consider a simple customer listing table that shows customer information such as "Name", "Address", "Industry", "Country", "City", "Revenue" etc. Creating a dynamic filter on “Country” field will prompt you to enter the “Country” value along with the condition that you would like to associate with the values you choose. Change the condition to "Not in" to see data where countries are not UK or Sweden. See Video

The condition clause can be applied to data sets or report items e.g. tables, charts. The BIRT engine automatically updates the query for performance by pushing the conditions down to the database. Actuate BIRT Designer allows you to even see query execution profile for each report item that uses dynamic filter.

To create a dynamic parameters as a filter to a report item or the dataset, select the control and go to the filter tab:

You can also create a generic dynamic filter parameters in the data explorer view and apply them to report items:

Discover this new feature in the latest release of BIRT in Actuate 11, you can download an evaluation copy of BIRT designer professional from here.

Ashwini Verma

If PDF output is one of the output formats that you use BIRT to generate you will be delighted with the new PDF emitter capabilities that is available with version 11 of Actuate BIRT. The emitter has been completely rewritten to give you a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) design experience. What this means to you as a report developer is that your PDF report layout will be consistent with the web layout and your pagination scheme will be maintained across various formats without any additional design effort. The layout of the output is also consistent with the layout in the design pane of BIRT designer. See Video
With flexible export options to Embed fonts, Substitute fonts and Chart DPI settings you can optimize PDF output as per your needs.

Vector graphics option enables your to generate high fidelity images when an SVG image is present in the BIRT design or if you choose to generate a chart in SVG format. Overall these settings can influence fonts used in the output, PDF file size and printout quality. See Video
The new emitter can even display native flash content in PDF. All the functionality and interactivity is preserved in the PDF output providing a complete web experience for flash objects in the PDF output. See Video

Download and try the above features for yourself in the new Actuate BIRT Designer Professional (version 11).

Ashwini Verma