Birt Info

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There was some interest in BIRT a couple of weeks back, so with Ryan's
permission, I wanted to pass along this info from him. Hopefully it will
be useful. If anyone would like to see the pdf documents he references,
let me know and I'll forward them to you.

I'm just duplicating an existing pdf report for now, but I've gotten to
the point where I've integrated the BIRT viewer in my proof of concept
application.

The XML datasources I'm using seem to retrieved the data once for the
datasource itself and once again for each dataset. Not a problem with
the model-view-controller pattern. Once I understood what it wanted, it
was pretty easy.

The report designer is intuitive enough to "just do it" with a minimum
of false starts. Actual documentation seems to be a little on the lean
side, but there are several books available. I haven't received the one
I ordered yet, but I know there's lots of neat stuff BIRT can do, so I'm
waiting for the mail man.

From open source perspective you could use BIRT REAPI (run time engine api) to integrate birt reports in his java application, here is a webinar on this topic:
http://www.birt-exchange.org/devshare/deploying-birt-reports/986-webinar-archive-using-the-birt-report-engine-apis/#description

If you are looking to utilize the Actuate BIRT designer and viewers, then you could leverage our AJAX API (JSAPI) or even the web-services API (for use with Actuate iServer).
http://www.birt-exchange.org/wiki/GSG:Getting_Started_with_BIRT_JavaScript_API/
http://www.birt-exchange.org/wiki/GSG:Getting_Started_with_Server_Integration_Technology/

The Actuate BIRT Designer uses Eclipse BIRT 2.3 and it adds in a Flash Object/Chart/Map library, which can be viewed through the Actuate BIRT Viewer and BIRT Interactive Viewer. You can find those topics at http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/products/birt-report-designers/actuate-birt-report-designers/features/ and http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/products/birt-deployment-options/actuate-java-components/.

Iâve attached two comparison documents showing the differences between using Eclipse BIRT and Actuate BIRT.

Regards,

Ryan Skorupan
Senior Account Manager - OEM/SAAS
office (913) 851-5334
mobile (913) 433-4730
fax (650) 645-3756
rskorupan@xxxxxxxxxxx

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Pete Hall
pete@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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