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

Last Week in the Forums - 8/27/12

The first post, for this week, is about . The poster wanted to be able to highlight the parameter value within a text in their report. An example is provided in the thread with shows one way to achieve this using script.

The next post, for this week, is about creating a graphical representation of airplane seating. The poster wanted to be able to show a graphical representation of an airplane's seating chart, showing which seats are occupied/reserved. An example showing a way in which this can be done can be found in the thread.

Here are a few more :

• Try to hide first row on page - but second row is hidden
  
• Totals in a row crosstab
  
• Calling Multiple reports through Drill through in different target frames
  
• BIRT Deployment in Jboss5.1
  
• Schedule a task to Ftp a BIRT report using iServer

Here is an unanswered post, from last week:

• Query Problem with Temporary Tables and Variables

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.

Last Week in the Forums - 8/20/12

The first post, for this week, is about coloring a bar based on a threshold value. The poster wanted to be able to color the portion of the bar that passed a threshold value. Say, there was a chart threshold of 50 and there were three bars valued at 75, 55, and 45. The first two bars would be one color up to 50, then another color above. The last bar would be entirely the first color. What is done in this case is to use two series. One that goes all the way up to the threshold, if the value is that high, and the other to continue above the threshold if needed. This allows for two colors at the threshold line. An example report can be found in the forum thread.

The next post, for this week, is about creating a chart in script. The poster wanted to know if it was possible to create a chart, on the fly, in script. An example can be found in the forum that shows how to create a chart, in script, using an existing dataSet.

Here are a few more :

• Alternating row colors for detail row?
  
• Create pie chart programmatically ?
  
• Compare date ranges
  
• Reading and setting the report-parameters in Birt Report Viewer jsp
  
• Setting Image on Runtime

Here are a few unanswered posts, from last week:

• AuthenticationMethod SQL connectivity
  
• JSAPI to get list of reports

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.

Last Week in the Forums - 8/13/12

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 continue to pick the pace back up and are pretty busy, now. 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 first topic, for this week, is about flowing report content across multiple page columns. The issue in this post is that there is not a standard newspaper layout, in BIRT, yet. The normal solution for this is to use a grid, duplicate tables, and filters to make the appearance of wrapping columns. The issue the poster was having with this was that they had multi-line rows that caused issues with ordering. The solution provided was to break the original dataSet's long rows into single line rows, allowing the normal solution to work. An example is posted in the thread showing this. Another example showing this with grouping, is also attached in the thread.

The last in detail topic, from last week, is about formatting currency values in an HTML text box. The poster was displaying a value using the <value-of> tag, in an HTML text box, so they could include it in a string, but they wanted it to come as a currency value, with symbol and decimal. The solution is that you can set a format property on the value-of tag, telling it how you want the value formatted, like: <VALUE-OF format="$#,##0.00{RoundingMode=HALF_UP}">row._outer["yourColumn"]</VALUE-OF>

Here are a few more :

• iServer Users Jobs View of Others
  
• Exception Handling in BIRT Viewer
  
• Couldn't Export Different Locale to the PDF Report
  
• Flash Map Questions
  
• Dynamically Scale SVG Graph

Here are a few unanswered posts, from last week:

• Centering an A4 Size Report in any Monitor
  
• How to get Client IP Address
  
• Send Parameters to Reports/Dashboards from the SecurityAdapter

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.

Last Week in the Forums - 8/6/12

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. Forum traffic continues to fluctuate during the summer, which is expected, but they're still fairly busy each week. 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!

I've decided to change the format, slightly. I'll continue to focus on a couple posts, in more detail, as I've always done. Instead of covering an unanswered post, in detail, I'll just list several unanswered posts, from the previous week, in hopes that a few answers will come out of the extra publicity, for them. I'll also list some other questions that have been answered, so this post can be a better summary of the forums, in each week. This hope is that this will aid community members in finding past posts that answer their questions. Feel free to let me know if you like or hate the changes. :)

The first topic I'll discuss, from last week, is about showing a percentage in a pie chart. The issue was that the dataSet consisted of a jobID and a status column. The status column was either "Complete" or blank. The solution given was to create a computed column to give the blank rows a value of "Not Complete", then, to use the computed column for the category and the count of jobs for the slice value. To get the percent, the series label needed to be changed from Value Data to Percentile Value Data. This can be done in the chart wizard. An example is posted in the thread.

The last detailed description post, for this week, is about limiting embedded tables with an outer table value. The issue is, when you embed a table, how can you limit the embedded table with a value from the outer table. There are a couple possibilities, here. One, if you're using SQL, is to use a dataSet parameter in your inner query, and use the dataSet parameter binding option, which can be found on the binding tab of the inner table, to pass row._outer["myoutertablevalue"] directly to the inner query. Another available way, if you're not using SQL, is to use this value in a filter on the inner table, to limit the data. An example of the data set parameter binding way can be found in the thread.

Here are a few more:

• DataSet Filter
  
• How to Give Access Privilege for a User (Not an Administrator) for Restarting the iServer
  
• Update URL in beforeFactory
  
• Table in a Header

And a few unanswered ones:

• Column Names in CSV Export
  
• BIRT PDF Report Print Issue in PDF Complete
  
• Disk Cache Size for Transient Reports Question
  
• Actuate JavaComponent WAR for Tomcat
  
• New Window After Entering Parameters

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

Thanks for reading this week's 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.