Collecting data and information in an information management system is only half the story. An important aspect is also the ability to create visualization or printable documents based on the data in such a system, in other words, reporting. Since a few builds we’re shipping the runtime of the Reporting engine BIRT with the initial download. Since BIRT allows an easy integration of custom data sources we decided to write our own ODA driver (which is part of the Eclipse DTP Connectivity Framework) which lets you build queries that are executed against your local workspace. In the following I’ll show you how to use the integrated BIRT capabilities and two showcases how Reporting can fit into an information management system.

A Report is also information

You can now create new information units which are reports. Therefore your input can be your own BIRT Report file or you choose an installed template from the given list in the wizard.

There are already a few templates installed, I want to show two of them.

Report your worked time on a task

Remus provides functionalities for work time tracking on tasks, e.g. you can synchronize your tasks from Outlook and start working on the tasks. If you want to see how much time you have worked on a specific task you can create a report based on a template. The input of the report is a task with a work-log (see picture).

If we create a report based on that task the application will show the following:

As you can see the report and the reports input are part of your local information pool.

Top posters on twitter

A second example is to report your twitter stream. Remus can be also used as a twitter client and so the data can be processed within a report, See the Top-Poster Report for twitter.

Editing report

By default you cannot edit these reports unless you download via “Extras -> Install new software” the BIRT Editing Capabilities which shows you after the installation a small button under the editor which opens the report in edit mode (see picture).  Again, at the bottom you’ll find a button to jump back to the report in “view” mode.

Create your own reports

If you want to create your own reports the best way is to start either with an empty report or you modify the templates to your needs. It is really simple and the only thing which is Remus specific is the creation of the data sources and datasets. I’ll write some documentations in the next time but the only thing you have to know which nodes within an information-unit you want to show within your report (the picture shows an structure-definition of a task and the relevant nodes for the work-log report)

Conclusion

First I’m very happy that BIRT Reporting could be integrated into Remus that easily. I think it’s an essential feature and gives the user a powerful tool for a customized output of his information data. So try it out - it’s free and open source, see the project-website http://remus-software.org 

Creating a Report about the PlanetEclipse-Feed with BIRT in Remus.