Integrating and Extending BIRT

The official Eclipse Series programmer's guide to integrating and extending BIRT, by its creators at Actuate: fully updated for BIRT 2.6 Shows how to develop custom reports in Java using BIRT's APIs. Fully explains all org.eclipse.birt package classes. The complete programmer and reporting professional's companion to THE BIRT Field Guide: the definitive technical resource for a worldwide community of users that has downloaded 10 million copies of BIRT. The second of a two-book series on business intelligence and reporting technology, Integrating and Extending BIRT, Third Edition thoroughly introduces BIRT 2.6's architecture, reporting framework, and most powerful improvements. The authors - all members of BIRT's extended development team at Actuate - demonstrate how to create powerful customized reports using scripting and the latest BIRT APIs. Then, using many downloadable code examples, they also demonstrate how to extend the BIRT Framework with new plug-ins built using the Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment. Writing for programmers and experienced report developers, they cover all facets of BIRT integration and extensibility, including: Deploying BIRT reports to an application server. Understanding BIRT architecture. Utilizing scripting in BIRT report designs. Making the most of the org.eclipse.birt package classes. Integrating BIRT functionality into applications. Working with the BIRT Extension Framework

Foreword        xix
Preface          xxi

Acknowledgments          xxix

Part 1: Installing and Deploying BIRT 1

Chapter 1: Introducing BIRT Report Designers 3

Understanding BIRT components 3

Understanding Eclipse BIRT packages 4

About types of BIRT builds 5

Chapter 2: Installing a BIRT Report Designer 7

Installing BIRT Report Designer Full Eclipse Install 7

Installing BIRT RCP Report Designer 8

Troubleshooting installation problems 9

Installing a language pack 10

Updating a BIRT Report Designer installation 11

Updating BIRT RCP Report Designer installation 12

Chapter 3: Installing Other BIRT Packages 15

Installing Chart Engine 15

Installing BIRT Data Tools Platform Integration 17

Installing BIRT Demo Database 17

Installing Report Engine 19

Installing BIRT Samples 21

Installing BIRT Source Code 21

Installing BIRT Web Tools Integration 22

Chapter 4: Deploying a BIRT Report to an Application Server 25

About application servers 25

Placing the BIRT report viewer on an application server 26

Placing fonts on the application server 31

Viewing a report using a browser 31

Using connection pooling on Tomcat 32

Part 2: Understanding the BIRT Framework 37

Chapter 5: Understanding the BIRT Architecture 39

Understanding the BIRT integration 39

About the BIRT applications 43

About the types of BIRT report items 46

About the Report Object Model (ROM) 47

About the types of BIRT files 47

About custom Java applications 49

About extensions to BIRT 50

Chapter 6: Understanding the Report Object Model 51

About the ROM specification 51

About the ROM schema 53

About the rom.def file 53

Understanding ROM elements 58

Part 3: Scripting in a Report Design 61

Chapter 7: Using Scripting in a Report Design 63

Overview of BIRT scripting 63

Events overview 64

Event order sequence 71

Chapter 8: Using JavaScript to Write an Event Handler 83

Using BIRT Report Designer to enter a JavaScript event handler 83

Using the reportContext object 86

Using the this object 93

Using the row object 96

Getting column information 97

Getting and altering the query string 98

Changing data source connection properties 99

Getting a parameter value 100

Determining script execution sequence 101

Tutorial 1: Writing an event handler in JavaScript 103

JavaScript event handler examples 107

Calling external JavaScript functions 111

Calling Java from JavaScript 112

Calling the method of a class in a plug-in 114

Chapter 9: Using Java to Write an Event Handler 117

Writing a Java event handler class 117

Writing a Java event handler 123

Understanding the BIRT interfaces 128

Java event handler example 135

Debugging a Java event handler 142

Chapter 10: Working with Chart Event Handlers 143

Chart events overview 143

Understanding the Chart script context 145

Understanding when chart events fire 150

Writing a Java chart event handler 164

Writing a JavaScript chart event handler 167

Using the simplified charting API 169

Chapter 11: Using Scripting to Access Data 173

Using a Scripted Data Source 173

Tutorial 2: Creating a scripted data source 175

Creating a web services data source using a custom connection class 184

Chapter 12: Debugging Event Handlers 187

Checking the syntax of JavaScript expressions 188

Debugging JavaScript event handlers code 190

Debugging Java event handler code 194

Debugging report execution exceptions 194

Creating a debug configuration 196

Tutorial 3: Debugging a report that contains Java and JavaScript code 198

Part 4: Integrating BIRT into Applications 215

Chapter 13: Understanding the BIRT APIs 217

Package hierarchy diagrams 218

About the BIRT Report Engine API 219

About the Design Engine API 226

About the BIRT Chart Engine API 239

Chapter 14: Programming Using the BIRT Reporting APIs 257

Building a reporting application 258

Generating reports from an application 262

Programming the structure of a report design 289

Chapter 15: Programming Using the BIRT Charting API 307

About the chart engine contents 307

About the environment for a charting application 308

About the charting API and the chart structure 310

Using the charting API to create a new chart 312

Modifying chart properties 312

Using a chart item in a report design 321

Using the BIRT charting API in a Java Swing application 334

Understanding the chart programming examples 340

Part 5: Working with the Extension Framework 347

Chapter 16: Building the BIRT Project 349

About building the BIRT project 349

Installing a working version of BIRT 350

Configuring Eclipse to compile BIRT and build the viewer JAR files 350

Downloading and extracting the correct version of the BIRT source code 353

Importing, building, and testing the BIRT project 354

Building new JAR files to display BIRT output 356

Chapter 17: Extending BIRT 359

Overview of the extension framework 359

Understanding the structure of a BIRT plug-in 359

Working with the Eclipse PDE 366

Creating the structure of a plug-in extension 370

Creating the plug-in extension content 373

Building a plug-in extension 377

Deploying the extension plug-in 381

Downloading the code for the extension examples 384

Chapter 18: Developing a Report Item Extension 387

Understanding a report item extension 387

Developing the sample report item extension 389

Understanding the rotated label report item extension 404

Deploying and testing the rotated label report item plug-in 412

Developing an advanced report item 416

Chapter 19: Developing a Report Rendering Extension 465

Understanding a report rendering extension 465

Developing a CSV report rendering extension 466

Developing an XML report rendering extension 494

Chapter 20: Developing an ODA Extension 509

Understanding an ODA extension 510

Developing the CSV ODA driver extensions 511

Implementing the CSV ODA driver plug-in 513

Understanding the sample CSV ODA driver extension 522

Developing the CSV ODA user interface extension 530

Understanding the sample CSV ODA user interface extension 537

Testing the CSV ODA user interface plug-in 548

Developing a Hibernate ODA extension 554

Chapter 21: Developing a Data Extraction Extension 601

Understanding a data extraction extension 601

Developing an XML data extraction extension 602

Chapter 22: Developing a Fragment 635

Understanding a fragment 635

Developing the sample fragment 636

Creating a fragment project 637

Understanding the sample fragment 640

Building, deploying, and testing a fragment 641

Chapter 23: Developing a Charting Extension 647

About BIRT charting extension points 648

Setting up the build environment 650

Extending the chart model 652

Glossary 707

Index 779

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