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. (more…)

Eclipse BIRT is a reporting API and designer for “rapid reporting creation” . In nearly every application you have the requirement to generate different reports in different output formats. A colleague was faced with that requirement on a J2EE Application and we decided to try BIRT to see if it’s already in a state where you can use it on “real” projects. In the following I want to share my experience with BIRT in that project.

The requirement was the analysis of a questionnaire with a chart. A common use-case. The team already had experiences with Jasper Reports and iText.

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