BIRT A Field Guide to Reporting

by Peh, Diana; Hague, Nola; Tatchell, Jane

• ISBN13: 9780321580276
• ISBN10: 0321580273
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-07-17
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Summary

The world-wide developer community has downloaded over three million copies of BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) from the Eclipse web site. Built on the open-source Eclipse platform, BIRT is a powerful reporting system that provides an end-to-end solution, from creating and deploying reports to integrating report capabilities in enterprise applications. The first in a two-book series about this exciting technology,BIRT, Second Edition: A Field Guide to Reportingis the authoritative guide to using BIRT Report Designer, the graphical tool that enables users of all levels to build reports, simple to sophisticated, without any programming. BIRT, Second Edition: A Field Guide to Reportingis an essential resource for users who want to create presentation quality reports from day one. The extensive examples, step-by-step instructions, and abundant illustrations help new users develop their report design skills quickly. Power users can find the information they need to make the most of the productrs"s rich set of features to build complex and compelling reports. By the time you finish this book, you learn the following and more Design effective business and corporate reports that convey information through images, charts, tables, and cross tabs Build reports using data from a variety of sources, including databases, XML documents, spreadsheets, and web services Enliven reports with interactive features, such as hyperlinks, Tooltips, and highlighting Create consistently styled reports and collaborate with other report designers through the use of templates and libraries of reusable elements Localize reports for an international audience This second edition, revised and expanded, adds updated examples and covers all the new and improved product features, including Cross tabs and OLAP cubes New chart types, including Gantt, bubble, tube, and cone charts Web services as a new data source New report output formats, including doc, ppt, xls, and PostScript The capability for reports to reference CSS Localization of report parameter and data values

Author Biography

The authors are members of the extended BIRT development team and have backgrounds in both computer science and technical writing. Collectively, they have many years of experience in technical consulting, training, writing, and publishing about reporting, business intelligence tools, and database technologies.

Table of Contents

Foreword?	p. xix
Preface?	p. xxiii
Acknowledgments?	p. xxix
Installing BIRT	p. 1
Prerequisites for BIRT	p. 3
Downloading Eclipse BIRT components	p. 3
BIRT Report Designer software requirements	p. 5
About types of BIRT builds	p. 7
Installing a BIRT Report Designer	p. 9
Installing BIRT Report Designer Full Eclipse Install	p. 9
Installing BIRT RCP Report Designer	p. 10
Troubleshooting installation problems	p. 11
Installing a language pack	p. 13
Updating a BIRT Report Designer installation	p. 14
Updating BIRT RCP Report Designer installation	p. 15
Getting Started	p. 17
Learning the Basics	p. 19
About BIRT reports	p. 19
Overview of the report design process	p. 19
About the report design environment	p. 21
Viewing sample reports	p. 30
Tutorial 1: Building a simple listing report	p. 32
Planning Your Report	p. 53
Identifying the content of the report	p. 54
Determining how the report will be viewed	p. 55
Considering international reporting requirements	p. 56
Deciding the layout and format of the report	p. 56
Drawing a mock-up	p. 58
Considering reuse of report components	p. 58
Managing report design resources	p. 59
Deciding how the report will be deployed	p. 59
Accessing and Bi
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

About this bookBIRT is a powerful reporting platform that provides end-to-end reporting solutions, from creating and deploying reports to integrating report capabilities into other enterprise applications. Two companion books,BIRT: A Field Guide to ReportingandIntegrating and Extending BIRT, cover the breadth and depth of BIRT's functionality.Using BIRT Report Designer's rich set of tools, report developers can create many reports, simple and sophisticated, without programming. This book teaches report developers how to create reports using the graphical tools of BIRT Report Designer. Report developers who want to go beyond the graphical tools to customize the report-generation process or incorporate complex business logic in their reports should read the second book,Integrating and Extending BIRT.This second edition, newly revised for BIRT 2.2.1, adds updated examples and covers all the new and improved product features, including cross tabs and OLAP cubes, new chart types, web services as a new data source, new report output formats, the capability for reports to reference Cascading Style Sheets, and the localization of report parameter and data values. Who should read this bookThis book is intended for people who have a basic need for reporting. You need not be an expert at creating reports nor do you need years of programming experience. Familiarity with the following subjects, however, is useful: HTML, for formatting report content SQL, for writing basic queries to extract data from a database for a report JavaScript, for writing basic expressions to manipulate data in the reportThis book provides many examples of formatting with HTML, and writing SQL queries and JavaScript expressions, but it is not designed to teach you HTML, SQL, or JavaScript. Contents of this bookThis book is divided into several parts. The following sections describe the contents of each of the parts. Part I, Installing BIRTPart I introduces the currently available BIRT reporting packages, the prerequisites for installation, and the steps to install and update the packages. Part I includes the following chapters: Chapter 1, Prerequisites for BIRT.BIRT provides a number of separate packages for BIRT Report Designer as downloadable archive (.zip) files on the Eclipse web site. Two of the packages are stand-alone modules and another requires an existing Eclipse environment. This chapter describes the prerequisites for each of the available report designer packages. Chapter 2, Installing a BIRT Report Designer.BIRT provides two report designers as separate packages, which are downloadable archive (.zip) files on the Eclipse web site. This chapter describes the steps required to install and update each of the available report designers. The chapter also shows how to troubleshoot installation problems and install a language pack that provides localization support. Part II, Getting StartedPart II provides an overview of the report creation process and introduces the report design environment. Part II includes the following chapters: Chapter 3, Learning the Basics.This chapter presents fundamental concepts of reporting and provides a tutorial. Report developers learn that the report design process begins with a paper and pencil sketch of the proposed report layout and continues through specifying data, laying out the report, formatting, previewing, and testing. In addition, this chapter orients the reader to the software. To accomplish that objective, the chapter provides a tutorial that walks the reader through a creation of a complete report. Chapter 4, Planning Your Report.This chapter explains the planning process in greater detail. Planning is essential to creating effective and efficient reports. A thorough understanding of user require