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

Till now if you had to create a union of two or more data sets, your only choices were to either handle it outside of BIRT or use scripted data source approach (see here). That approach works but has a number of disadvantages like data redundancy besides being slow and required coding knowledge. With version 11 of Actuate BIRT you can now create union of two or more data sets(derived from same or different data sources) easily using a simple and intuitive GUI that results in a data set quite similar to UNION construct in SQL. Here is a how to video regarding this new features.

Actuate 11 BIRT also enhances the different ways you can join data sets. The supported join options are inner join, full outer join, left outer join, right outer join and side by side join. Here is a quick demonstration video on how this is done.

The join conditions can also be based on multiple columns for cases where the joined tables contain composite primary keys.

Download a free evaluation copy of Actuate 11 and test drive these extensive merge and join options to create data sets for your BIRT project.

Ashwini Verma