BIRT BI TOOL

TEAM BIRT

WHAT IS B.I.R.T
Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) is an open source software project that provides
reporting and business intelligence capabilities for client and web applications, especially those based
on Java and Java EE.
BIRT is a top-level software project within the Eclipse Foundation, an independent nonprofit association of software industry vendors and an open source community.
BIRT Report designs are persisted as XML and can access a number of different data sources
including JDO datastores,JFire Scripting Objects, POJOs, SQL databases, Web Services and XML.

HISTORY OF BIRT
The BIRT project was first proposed and sponsored by Actuate Corporation when Actuate joined the
Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer on August 24, 2004. The project was subsequently approved
and became a top-level project within the Eclipse community on October 6, 2004 The project contributor
community includes IBM, and Innovent Solutions.
In 2007 IBM's Tivoli Division adopted BIRT as the infrastructure for its Tivoli Common Reporting
(TCR) product. TCR produces historical reports on Tivoli-managed IT resources and processes.
The initial project code base was designed and developed by Actuate beginning in early 2004 and
donated to the Eclipse Foundation when the project was approved.

With BIRT, we can add a rich variety of reports to your application:

Lists - The simplest reports are lists of data. As the lists get longer, you can add grouping to organize
related data together (orders grouped by customer, products grouped by supplier). If your data is
numeric, you can easily add totals, averages and other summaries.
Charts - Numeric data is much easier to understand when presented as a chart. BIRT provides pie
charts, line & bar charts and many more. BIRT charts can be rendered in SVG and support events to
allow user interaction.
Crosstabs - Crosstabs (also called a cross-tabulation or matrix) shows data in two dimensions: sales
per quarter or hits per web page.
Letters & Documents - Notices, form letters, and other textual documents are easy to create with
BIRT. Documents can include text, formatting, lists, charts and more.

 Compound Reports - Many reports need to combine the above into a single
document. For example, a customer statement may list the information for the
customer, provide text about current promotions, and provide side-by-side lists of
payments and charges. A financial report may include disclaimers, charts, tables all
with extensive formatting that matches corporate color schemes.

Video Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TRndgUMUmU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdr_LeHjIH8

BIRT COMPONENTS

BIRT Report Designer

Charting Engine

Design Engine

BIRT Viewer

Report Engine

BIRT REPORT DESIGNER

 Design Engine - This engine is responsible for creating and modifying report designs. The
Design Engine API (DE API) wraps the functionality of the design engine and is available for
use within any Java/Java EE project. The BIRT Report Designer uses this API internally to
construct the XML designs.
Report Engine - The Report Engine uses the report design files to generate and render
reports. Using the Report Engine API (RE API) the engine can be embedded within any
Java/Java EE application. The BIRT Web Viewer uses this API to execute and display reports.
Charting Engine - The Charting Engine is used to design and generate Charts either in
standalone or embedded within BIRT reports. The Charting Engine API (CE API) allows
Java/Java EE developers to add charting capabilities to their applications. The Design and
Report Engines make use of this API to deliver Charts.
BIRT Viewer - The BIRT project provides a sample "viewer" that is used to preview reports
within Eclipse. BIRT includes an Apache Tomcat server invoked each time you preview your
report. In addition to being packaged as an Eclipse Plug-in, the Viewer is also available as a
standalone Java EE application, which can be used in any JSP-compliant Java EE server. The
Viewer Plug-in can also be embedded within a Rich Client Platform (RCP) application.

HIGH LEVEL BIRT ARCHITECTURE

BIRT PIPELINE WITH RESPECT TO THE APIS

BIRT DEVELOPERS
Not required:
to be an expert in creating reports
years of programming experience

Need to have basic knowledge of:

HTML (for formatting)
SQL (to write basic queries to extract data for the report)

Even more beneficial to know:

JavaScript (to write basic expressions to manipulate data in the report)
Java (for business logic)

BIRT REPORTS
BIRT reports consist of four main parts:
data
data transforms
business logic
presentation

BIRT: DATA
Databases, web services, Java objects, flat files
Support for using code to get at other sources of data
One report can include data from many data sources.
separate data sources can be combined using inner and outer
joins.

BIRT: DATA TRANSFORMS

Data can be sorted, summarized, filtered and grouped to fit the
user's needs.
databases can do some of this work, but query may become too
complicated
especially beneficial if we have "simple" data sources such as flat files
or Java objects.

BIRT allows more sophisticated operations such as grouping on

sums, percentages of overall totals and more.

BIRT: BUSINESS LOGIC

Many reports require business-specific logic to convert
raw data into information useful for the user.
If the logic is just for the report, you can script it using
BIRT's JavaScript support.
If your application already contains the logic, you can call
into your existing Java code.

BIRT: PRESENTATION
Once the data is ready, you have a wide range of options for presenting it to
the user:
Text and dynamic text
Lists
Grids
Tables
Cross Tabs
Charts of many types

BIRT: ADVANTAGES AND

DISADVANTAGES
Advantages
Different data sources

Disadvantages

Different output formats

Installation issues

Saves time when creating

advanced/complicated reports for
programmers

BIRT seems to be "memory

intensive

Allows to create simple reports for

non programmers just by drag and
drop

Manuals and Help for 2.2 ?

Flash tutorials/examples at Eclipse

BIRT webpage

Learning curve

THANK YOU