Business Intelligence, reporting and the BIRT offer
BI and report generation issues
Main market players and Opensource model The
BIRT offer: Engine and Designer

Features offered
Types of reports available
Constitution and elements of a report
Integration Java, Java EE

The different distributions available
Prerequisites and installation
Presentation of the distribution, documentation and examples

Practical work: Installation of the distribution and setting up of the development environment

BIRT Designer presentation :

Notion of project, report, template
Eclipse views and perspectives
The element palettes
Designer configuration

Data sources : 

The different data sources supported Data consumption during generation
Reminder on JDBC and definition of a relational data source in the Designer Definition of XML data source Data
explorer

Datasets :

Debugging and testing the SQL query
Rules on fields
Java / SQL type correspondence

Use of Labels, Text, Data and Table
elements Data / element association
Running the report Generation PDF, HTML

Practical work: Definition of sources and datasets, creation of a report

Formatting a report

Managing styles
Tools for alignment
Colors and Fonts
Formatting and data conversion
Master pages Sorting

and groups

Delegating sorting to the BIRT engine
Definitions of groups and Nesting of groups
Aggregation calculations
Merging of columns in the Tables

Parameters and Expressions Use

case of parameters, parameters used in SQL queries
Parameter entry mode Cascading parameter
The expressions, types, available syntax Regular expressions

Practical work: Use of the various elements presented, management of styles, fonts, colors Grouping of data from aggregation calculations Parameterized report

Libraries and reuse

Source libraries and datasets
Component
libraries and styles Organization of libraries, publication
Local redefinitions

Use of templates

Create a
Publish and Use template

Customization and scripting

Syntax elements
Graphic customization
Modification of the dataset

Practical work: Setting up libraries, publication and use
Application of a graphic charter via scripting

Sub reports

sub reporting use case, comparison with groups Expression of the data source and the query, listing parameter passing under the report in the report relative
Lier the current data in the report

Graphics

Available
charts and associated datasets Specific attributes of the different charts
Association of hypertext links
Documentation and extensions available

Cross tables

Principles of cross tables, grouping of rows and columns
Measures, cells, totals
Cross tables and OLAP

Practical work: Master / detail report with sub reports, passing parameters and retrieving return values
Crosstab charts

Integration

Case of a Java application
Case of a war
Integration in Java EE

API BIRT

API of the design
engine API of the graph engine


Practical work: Integration of BIRT in a web application
Programmatic handling of a report via the BIRT API

Integration in a Linux system: Linux command to generate a report