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| <p class="head">BIRT Overview</p> |
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| <p class="subhead">Integrating BIRT into your Application</p> |
| |
| <h1>BIRT in a J2EE Application</h1> |
| <p> |
| The BIRT Report Engine is packaged as a JAR file that you add to your J2EE |
| application. The Report Engine is a series of POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) |
| that your JSP pages can call to integrate reporting into your application. |
| <p> |
| BIRT also delivers an example web application that can be deployed to an |
| existing application server. |
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| <img src="../project/chart1.jpg" width="658" height="237"> <br> |
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| <p> |
| BIRT has four main integration points with your application: |
| |
| <dl class="arrow-list"> |
| <dt>Parameter UI |
| <dd>Most reports allow the user to specify some kind of input, called a |
| <i>report parameter</i>. For example, a customer report might ask for the |
| customer to display. Your parameter page can be static: custom designed |
| for each report. Or, you can use a dynamic page powered by parameter |
| meta-data so that a single page works for any report. BIRT also supports |
| the concept of dynamic and cascaded parameters. This allows parameters to be |
| tied to Data Sets defined within the report. |
| |
| <dt>Running the Report |
| <dd>When the user submits the parameter form, your web application passes the |
| parameters to the BIRT report engine which reads the report design file, |
| reads the data, and produces the report output. BIRT uses the term |
| <i>factory</i> when the engine runs a report. |
| |
| <dt>Data Access |
| <dd>Reports obtain data from your application as explained above. Java applications |
| often provide data to the BIRT factory via Java objects. |
| |
| <dt>Viewing |
| <dd>BIRT uses a Java servlet, called the viewer, to enable the user to view the output |
| of the report in paginated HTML. The viewer also supports exporting data to CSV, parameter |
| collection and table of contents functionality. |
| </dl> |
| |
| |
| <h1>Example Viewer</h1> |
| <p> |
| The BIRT project provides a sample "viewer" to help you get get started. The |
| sample viewer is also used to preview reports within Eclipse: BIRT includes an |
| Apache Tomcat server invoked each time you preview your report. The viewer |
| can also be used in any JSP-compliant J2EE server. |
| <p> |
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| BIRT Release 2.0 provides web output as a single page, paginated HTML, and PDF. Additionally the |
| viewer allows exporting the data to CSV and Table of Contents functionality.<p> |
| |
| More information about the sample viewer is available in the <a href="../deploy"> |
| integration</a> section.</body></html> |
