Integrating and Extending BIRT

Book excerpt: The world-wide developer community has downloaded over three million copies of BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) from the Eclipse web site. Built on the open-source Eclipse platform, BIRT is a powerful reporting system that provides an end-to-end solution, from creating and deploying reports to integrating report capabilities in enterprise applications. The second of a two-book series on business intelligence and reporting technology, Integrating and Extending BIRT, Second Edition introduces programmers to BIRT architecture and the reporting framework. BIRT technology makes it possible for a programmer to build a customized report using scripting and BIRT APIs. A programmer can also extend the BIRT framework by creating a new plug-in using the Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment. This book provides extensive examples on how to build plug-ins to extend the features of the BIRT framework. The source code for these examples is available for download. The topics discussed include Installing and deploying BIRT Deploying a BIRT report to an application server Understanding BIRT architecture Scripting in a BIRT report design Integrating BIRT functionality into applications Working with the BIRT extension framework This second edition, revised and expanded, adds the following new content Updated architectural diagrams Expanded scripting examples Tag library descriptions In-depth description of BIRT Web Viewer Configuring BIRT to use a JNDI connection XML report rendering plug-in example Fragment plug-in localization example Open Data Access (ODA) plug-in example implementing the new Data Tools Platform (DTP) design and run-time wizards