Integrating and Extending BIRT

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