Integrating And Extending Birt

About this book BIRT 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 Reporting and Integrating and Extending BIRT, cover the breadth and depth of BIRT's functionality. This book informs report developers about how to write scripts that Customize the report-generation process Incorporate complex business logic in their reports This book also informs application developers about how to Deploy reports Integrate reporting capabilities into other applications Extend BIRT functionality By its very nature, reporting is not a stand-alone technology. It draws on data generated by applications and is frequently integrated tightly within those applications. In some applications, such as performance monitoring, reporting provides the most tangible expression of value. Therefore, a successful reporting platform must emphasize interoperability and extensibility, and, a successful implementation of that platform must always involve some measure of integration and extension. As you read this book, you will see the significant investment that has been made in BIRT to provide support for interoperability and extensibility. In the area of interoperability, for instance, BIRT supports flexible deployment of its report engine and viewer to a wide variety of J2EE application server environments. Other provisions for interoperability in the BIRT platform include the ability to dynamically build or modify reports from within an application using the design engine application programming interface (API) and the ability to access native data objects using the scripted data source mechanism. In the area of extensibility, BIRT provides hooks to build upon platform capabilities in the following areas: Report Items. New controls may be added to the BIRT designer palette using the report item extension API. Complex Logic. Event handlers written in JavaScript or Java may be included in the generation or presentation phase of report or chart execution to incorporate custom logic required by the application. Data Access. The Open Data Access (ODA) extension provides the means to develop drivers for new, non-JDBC data sources as well as create graphical user interfaces for query specification. Rendering. New report output formats or output for specialized devices can be developed using the report rendering extension API. Who should read this book This book is intended for people who have a programming background. These readers can be categorized as Embedders and integrators. These individuals work with the software to integrate it into their current application infrastructure. Extenders. These individuals leverage APIs and other extension points to add capability or to establish new interoperability between currently disparate components or services. To write scripts in report design, you need knowledge of JavaScript or Java. More advanced tasks, such as extending BIRT's functionality, require Java development experience and familiarity with the Eclipse platform. Contents of this book This book is divided into several parts. The following sections describe the contents of each of the parts. Installing and Deploying BIRT Part I, "Installing and Deploying BIRT," 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 as downloadable archive (.zip) files on the Eclipse web site. Some ofBondur, Tom is the author of 'Integrating And Extending Birt ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780321443854 and ISBN 0321443853.