[cypherdj]

Hi everyone,

it has been a little while since I last contributed on BIRT-exchange. The reasons behind it are quite simply a combinaison of other project commitments and my recent work on dashbirt, which I am hoping will make up for my absence.

So what exactly is dashbirt?

DashBIRT is a web application built upon the BIRT Chart Engine API and AJAX technology to enable charts (rendered to the browser in SVG format) to interact with one another, through the invocation of scripts.

This DashBIRT demo contains a sample jsp page (see included screenshot), which renders the following charts, built with the RCP Report Designer 2.5.1:

- top selling models (pie chart),
- sales by customer (bar chart).

Interactivity on click of each slice of the top selling models pie chart has been enabled to fire the changeProduct client-side event, providing the product name as an argument.

The sales by customer bar chart has been configured to subscribe to this event.

Feel free to download this dev share and to add your own charts, querying your own database, rather than the classic models sample database.

Future of DashBIRT

This is where you can contribute ;-)

Once you've tested dashbirt, you will probably find some limitations.

First of all, the data set evaluator used to populate the chart is quite primitive, so using expressions rather than direct column binding will most likely not work. If anyone wishes to suggest how to improve the evaluator provided or contribute a less primitive one, let me know!

Secondly, I've only tested simple pie and bar charts, and would be interested to find out if this functionality still stands the test with other chart types. Again, please let me know if you find any odd behaviours.

Thirdly, it only supports charts at the moment, but I can see how other report elements might also need to be "controlled", to allow more dynamic reports, showing multiple tables/crosstabs.

Finally, this prototype does not support event bubbling, for instance where chart c subscribes to an event generated by chart b, itself subscribed to an event from chart a. In this instance, only chart b gets refreshed, where you would logically expect chart c to also get updated. The reason why I chose not to support this feature is "e;what parameter values would you pass from chart b?"e; You would expect the 1st value in chart b to be selected, but this might be difficult to implement. I will be eagerly awaiting any suggestions,

Happy BIRTing,
Regards,
Cedric

Attached File(s)

•  dashbirt.jpg (42.75K)
  Number of downloads: 18
•  dashbirt.jpg (42.75K)
  Number of downloads: 18

[Xavier]

Hi,

I downloaded your example but I can't run it on Tomcat :

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: /index.jsp(19,5) Impossible de charger la classe org.cypher.dashbirt.tags.ChartTag org.apache.jasper.compiler.DefaultErrorHandler.jspError(DefaultErrorHandler.java:40)
org.apache.jasper.compiler.ErrorDispatcher.dispatch(ErrorDispatcher.java:407)org.apache.jasper.compiler.ErrorDispatcher.jspError(ErrorDispatcher.java:198)
...

Do you have an idea ?

Regards

Xavier

[cypherdj]

As I've mentioned in the readme file, within the included zip, the classes have not been compiled, so you would typically need to create a java project in eclipse, with the contents of the zip.

You will then need to add the lib and platform folders under WEB-INf, which I did not include due to attachment limitations for a devshare. However, these are listed within the readme file.

That is, you cannot simply deploy this zip directly into tomcat.

Thanks for giving this demo a spin, and looking forward to your comments once you get it up and running,
Cedric

[Xavier]

Hello,

my "little" problem is that I don't known how to use Eclipse, and than, do a compilation.
I just wanted to do a demostration of a dashboard using Birt for my firm (we use Birt with the RCP Designer and webservice).

Regards,

Xavier

[cypherdj]

Hey Xavier,

that'd be great. Here's what I'll do, I'll post the pre-compiled classes in a zip file later on, along with instructions on how to deploy the app directly.

Have you set a date for the presentation yet?

Cheers,
Cedric

[Xavier]

asap !! (joke)

No date, but I you have time this week or next week for that, it would be great.
Thanks in advance.

Xavier

[cypherdj]

I'll get it done this evening, won't take long.

[cypherdj]

A few people have indicated that they had difficulties locating the required libraries, so I thought I would post this attached requiredlibs.txt, which contains the filename and location for each library.

Simply make sure those libraries are on the java build path for your java project.

Regards,
Cedric

Attached File(s)

•  requiredlibs.txt (3.42K)
  Number of downloads: 5
•  requiredlibs.txt (3.42K)
  Number of downloads: 5

[cypherdj]

Also, as previously mentioned, for those who do not have eclipse, but simply tomcat, you can delete the WEB-INF/classes folder and instead drop the attached file in WEB-INF/lib (and rename from .zip to .jar).

Please note that these classes were compiled with JDK 1.6, with no backwards compatibility. Drop me a line if you're using an earlier version of the JDK, and I'll compile with backwards compatibility for your required JDK.

Regards,
Cedric

Attached File(s)

•  DashBIRT-1.0-20100203.zip (353bytes)
  Number of downloads: 10
•  DashBIRT-1.0-20100203.zip (353bytes)
  Number of downloads: 10

[Xavier]

Hi Cedric,

your 2nd zip file contains only 1 file.
Normal ?

Xavier

[cypherdj]

Not quite normal, no. I'll post the corrected version later on this evening.

Thanks for your patience, work in progress ;-)

[cypherdj]

Here is the jar file attached, which should allow you to run the application. It's compiled with JDK 1.6, but I've set the target to 1.5, so *hopefully* this will run fine for people using JDK 1.5. As mentioned previously, simply drop this in WEB-INF/lib (and rename it from .zip to .jar) along with *all* the jars listed in the requiredlibs.txt document also included, and also include the platform folder, or you will get an error: "Cannot start OSGI Platform", or something along those lines.

I had also named the war file DashBIRT-1.0-20100203.zip, but once you have unzipped the contents, remember to rename the folder to simply DashBIRT when you copy it to tomcat/webapps, or you will end up hypnotised staring at the animated gifs ;-) The reason for this is that the Controller.trigger(event) javascript function currently "hardcodes" the AJAX url, which I've since fixed ;-)

See included folder structure image to avoid any confusion!

If you're still having problems, let me know,
Cedric

Attached File(s)

•  DashBIRT-1.0-20100210.zip (14.02K)
  Number of downloads: 7
•  requiredlibs.txt (3.17K)
  Number of downloads: 8
•  DashBIRT_deployed.jpg (66.98K)
  Number of downloads: 12
•  DashBIRT-1.0-20100210.zip (14.02K)
  Number of downloads: 7
•  requiredlibs.txt (3.17K)
  Number of downloads: 8
•  DashBIRT_deployed.jpg (66.98K)
  Number of downloads: 12

[mwilliams]

Cedric,

I'm having issues getting this to run. I'm getting a null pointer exception right now. I'm using tomcat 6, not tomcat 5. I don't know if that's making the difference or not.

What I did:

I unzipped the original file from the devShare into a folder called DashBIRT in my webapps section of tomcat. I added the platform file from the runtime and all the libs from your list of required libs. I then added the above file as a jar to the WEB-INF/lib file.

Any suggestions on what I've done wrong?

[cypherdj]

Hi Michael,

can you attach the stack trace or send it on my hotmail address?

Apart from a different version of tomcat, which JDK and BIRT version are you using?

[mwilliams]

1.6 & 2.5.1. I'll run it again and copy the stack trace to send to your email.

[cypherdj]

Hi Michael,

any progress with deployment of dashbirt? Did you get a chance to reproduce thee problem? If so, can you post or email the stacktrace?

Cheers,
Cedric

[mwilliams]

Cedric,

Sorry for the delay, I got stuck doing other stuff and wasn't able to get the trace to you til today. I have emailed it though. Let me know if you see what I may have done wrong. I'll try starting over again today.

[mwilliams]

Cedric,

Did you receive my email with the error stack trace?

[cypherdj]

Hi Michael,

sorry for not replying earlier. I got your stacktrace, and have replied a while back. I'm not sure if you ever got my reply.

Did you manage to get the app running in the end?