councils/AC/birt/BIRT_architecture_plan.html - www.eclipse.org/org - Git at Google

 <!-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
 <!--
 Project: Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform Project
 -->
 <!-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->

 <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
 <html>
   <head>
     <title></title>
     <meta HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="eclipse_style.css" >
     <style type="text/css">
 <!--
 .style1 {font-size: 12px}
 -->
     </style>
   </head>
   <body>

     <div id="page_header"><FONT class=indextop>Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools Project</FONT> <BR>
     </div>
     <div id="page_sub_header">Project architecture</div>

     <div id="section_header">Project description</div>
   <div class="content">
       <p>The Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools Project  is an open source top level project of eclipse.org. Its goal is to provide an extensible set of tools to help develop business intelligence and reporting capabilities in Java applications. </p>

     Refer to the <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/birt/index.php">Project overview</a> for additional project information.
   </div>
    	<br>
     <div id="section_header">Project architecture</div>
    	<br>
   <div class="image_map"><img src="Birt%20Architecture.jpg" width="765" height="356">
 	  <span class="img_caption style1">Figure 1. BI &amp; Reporting Tools project components and the Eclipse Platform
 	  </span>
   </div>
     <div>
       <div id="section_divider" />
     </div>
     <div class="content">
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
       <p>The Eclipse BIRT project provides a set of
   integrated desktop designer components for a user to design
   and develop Business Intelligence and Reporting
   applications. In addition to the designer components, the
   BIRT project also provides a runtime library to
   execute the designs created by the desktop designer
   tools and deliver the generated content to end users.
   The resulting output could be in any one of various
   forms, for example, a report,
   dash-board, or interactive on-line analytic presentation.</p>
       <p>The initial release of BIRT focuses on a reporting platform and a business-charting platform. It includes a desktop report designer and a chart builder. The runtime library includes a report viewer, a report engine, a report model, a data engine, a chart engine, and a set of core infrastructure components.</p>
       <p>As the previous diagram illustrates, the BIRT
 designer components depend on the Eclipse core platform and
 tools framework. They also depend on the BIRT runtime
 library to create, open, modify, and persist report
 and chart designs, and to compile, execute, and
 preview reports and charts. The Chart Engine uses
 Eclipse Modeling Frameowrk (EMF) at runtime.</p>
       <p>The following paragraphs describe Eclipse BI &amp; Report Tools components in more detail. Please refer to the <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/org/councils/AC/main.html">Eclipse platform architecture</a> for descriptions of other Eclipse components.</p>
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
     </div>
 <br>
     <div id="section_header">Reporting Components </div>
 </br>
     <div class="content">
       <p>The reporting components in BIRT provide an extensible framework for report designing, report generation, and report viewing. This framework consists of following components described in the following sections: report model, report engine, report designer, and report viewer. The BIRT reporting framework allows Java developers to add plugins to extends its functionalities, such as new types of report item, new report output format, etc. Together with these plug-ins, the BIRT reporting framework provides a robust reporting tool for Java developers to build reporting applications.</p>
       <h5>Report Designer</h5>
       <p>The report designer component is an Eclipse-based desktop
 	    environment for report creation. This component provides easy-to-use,
 	    graphical report editing as well as scripting to control creation of the report
 	    output dynamically.
       </p>
       <h5>Report  Model</h5>
       <p>The report model component implements a design-time view of the Report Object Model: the description of a BIRT report. Services include:</p>
       <ul>
         <li> Complete API for creating, modifying, and exploring report designs<br>
       Full undo and redo of report design modifications<br>
       Reading and writing XML design files<br>
       Semantic checking of the design</li>
       </ul>
       <p>The BIRT report designer, viewer, and engine use report model to work with report designs. Applications can use the model to create a report design programmatically.</p>
       <h5>Report Engine</h5>
       <p>The report engine component generates report documents based on XML report designs. To support this functionality, the report engine provides two core services: generation and presentation.</p>
       <p>The generation service is responsible for the tasks shown in the following list:</p>
       <ul>
         <li>Connecting to all specified data
           sources</li>
         <li>Retrieving the data from the data sources</li>
         <li>Processing the data by sorting, grouping, calculating aggregations, and so on</li>
         <li>Creating the report layout</li>
         <li>Generating the report document</li>
       </ul>
       <p>The presentation service performs the tasks required for viewing report content, as shown in the following list:</p>
       <ul>
         <li>Providing the infrastructure for viewing a document online</li>
         <li>Printing a document</li>
         <li>Generating various output documents such as PDF</li>
       </ul>
       <h5>Report Viewer</h5>
       <p>The report viewer is a web-based component that provides the capability to execute a report design and view a report document in various output formats, such as HTML and PDF. The viewer provides the following items:</p>
       <ul>
         <li>An interface for the end user to enter parameter values when generating the report</li>
         <li>Navigation of report pages</li>
         <li>Drill through report links</li>
         <li>Searching the content of a report</li>
       </ul>
       <p>The viewer is fully integrated with the Eclipse platform through Tomcat. This integration supports BIRT report developers previewing reports through either the Eclipse built-in browser or their preferred external browser.</p>
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
   </div>
     <div id="section_header">Data Engine</div>
   <div class="content">
     <p>The data engine component provides the
 capability for data access, data projection, data
 transformation, and data aggregation. This component
 supports  plug-in data access drivers to access a
 variety of data sources. The data engine also provides
 metadata services to support the creation of a report design.</p>
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
  </div>

 <div id="section_header">Chart Framework</div>
 <div class="content">
       <p>The chart framework provides an extensible
 platform to design and generate rich business charts.
 Extending this framework can provide additional chart
 series types, support for new rendering devices, and
 custom data feed to charts. The BIRT reporting tool uses charting engine to support chart report items.</p>
       <h5>Chart Engine</h5>
       <p>The chart engine component generates device-independent charts by processing an EMF-based chart model, defined in XML.</p>
       <h5>Chart Builder</h5>
       <p>The chart builder provides a graphical user
 interface for the user to define charts interactively.
 The chart builder framework has extension points to
 support extending the user interface to create new chart types. </p>
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
   </div>

         <div id="section_header">Core Components</div>
 <div class="content">
       <p> The BIRT core components  provide common
 infrastructure  services for the BIRT platform.
 These services include:
 <ul>
 <li> Logging</li>
 <li>Exception handling </li>
 <li>An internationalization framework</li>
 <li>Data type string formatting functions</li>
 <li>A  scripting framework
 </ul>
 </p>
 <p>&nbsp;</p>

   </div>
     <div id="copyright"></div>
   </body>
 </html>
	<!-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
	<!--
	Project: Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform Project
	-->
	<!-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->

	<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
	<html>
	<head>
	<title></title>
	<meta HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="eclipse_style.css" >
	<style type="text/css">
	<!--
	.style1 {font-size: 12px}
	-->
	</style>
	</head>
	<body>

	<div id="page_header"><FONT class=indextop>Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools Project</FONT> <BR>
	</div>
	<div id="page_sub_header">Project architecture</div>

	<div id="section_header">Project description</div>
	<div class="content">
	<p>The Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools Project is an open source top level project of eclipse.org. Its goal is to provide an extensible set of tools to help develop business intelligence and reporting capabilities in Java applications. </p>

	Refer to the <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/birt/index.php">Project overview</a> for additional project information.
	</div>
	<br>
	<div id="section_header">Project architecture</div>
	<br>
	<div class="image_map"><img src="Birt%20Architecture.jpg" width="765" height="356">
	<span class="img_caption style1">Figure 1. BI & Reporting Tools project components and the Eclipse Platform
	</span>
	</div>
	<div>
	<div id="section_divider" />
	</div>
	<div class="content">
	<p> </p>
	<p>The Eclipse BIRT project provides a set of
	integrated desktop designer components for a user to design
	and develop Business Intelligence and Reporting
	applications. In addition to the designer components, the
	BIRT project also provides a runtime library to
	execute the designs created by the desktop designer
	tools and deliver the generated content to end users.
	The resulting output could be in any one of various
	forms, for example, a report,
	dash-board, or interactive on-line analytic presentation.</p>
	<p>The initial release of BIRT focuses on a reporting platform and a business-charting platform. It includes a desktop report designer and a chart builder. The runtime library includes a report viewer, a report engine, a report model, a data engine, a chart engine, and a set of core infrastructure components.</p>
	<p>As the previous diagram illustrates, the BIRT
	designer components depend on the Eclipse core platform and
	tools framework. They also depend on the BIRT runtime
	library to create, open, modify, and persist report
	and chart designs, and to compile, execute, and
	preview reports and charts. The Chart Engine uses
	Eclipse Modeling Frameowrk (EMF) at runtime.</p>
	<p>The following paragraphs describe Eclipse BI & Report Tools components in more detail. Please refer to the <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/org/councils/AC/main.html">Eclipse platform architecture</a> for descriptions of other Eclipse components.</p>
	<p> </p>
	</div>
	<br>
	<div id="section_header">Reporting Components </div>
	</br>
	<div class="content">
	<p>The reporting components in BIRT provide an extensible framework for report designing, report generation, and report viewing. This framework consists of following components described in the following sections: report model, report engine, report designer, and report viewer. The BIRT reporting framework allows Java developers to add plugins to extends its functionalities, such as new types of report item, new report output format, etc. Together with these plug-ins, the BIRT reporting framework provides a robust reporting tool for Java developers to build reporting applications.</p>
	<h5>Report Designer</h5>
	<p>The report designer component is an Eclipse-based desktop
	environment for report creation. This component provides easy-to-use,
	graphical report editing as well as scripting to control creation of the report
	output dynamically.
	</p>
	<h5>Report Model</h5>
	<p>The report model component implements a design-time view of the Report Object Model: the description of a BIRT report. Services include:</p>
	<ul>
	<li> Complete API for creating, modifying, and exploring report designs<br>
	Full undo and redo of report design modifications<br>
	Reading and writing XML design files<br>
	Semantic checking of the design</li>
	</ul>
	<p>The BIRT report designer, viewer, and engine use report model to work with report designs. Applications can use the model to create a report design programmatically.</p>
	<h5>Report Engine</h5>
	<p>The report engine component generates report documents based on XML report designs. To support this functionality, the report engine provides two core services: generation and presentation.</p>
	<p>The generation service is responsible for the tasks shown in the following list:</p>
	<ul>
	<li>Connecting to all specified data
	sources</li>
	<li>Retrieving the data from the data sources</li>
	<li>Processing the data by sorting, grouping, calculating aggregations, and so on</li>
	<li>Creating the report layout</li>
	<li>Generating the report document</li>
	</ul>
	<p>The presentation service performs the tasks required for viewing report content, as shown in the following list:</p>
	<ul>
	<li>Providing the infrastructure for viewing a document online</li>
	<li>Printing a document</li>
	<li>Generating various output documents such as PDF</li>
	</ul>
	<h5>Report Viewer</h5>
	<p>The report viewer is a web-based component that provides the capability to execute a report design and view a report document in various output formats, such as HTML and PDF. The viewer provides the following items:</p>
	<ul>
	<li>An interface for the end user to enter parameter values when generating the report</li>
	<li>Navigation of report pages</li>
	<li>Drill through report links</li>
	<li>Searching the content of a report</li>
	</ul>
	<p>The viewer is fully integrated with the Eclipse platform through Tomcat. This integration supports BIRT report developers previewing reports through either the Eclipse built-in browser or their preferred external browser.</p>
	<p> </p>
	</div>
	<div id="section_header">Data Engine</div>
	<div class="content">
	<p>The data engine component provides the
	capability for data access, data projection, data
	transformation, and data aggregation. This component
	supports plug-in data access drivers to access a
	variety of data sources. The data engine also provides
	metadata services to support the creation of a report design.</p>
	<p> </p>
	</div>

	<div id="section_header">Chart Framework</div>
	<div class="content">
	<p>The chart framework provides an extensible
	platform to design and generate rich business charts.
	Extending this framework can provide additional chart
	series types, support for new rendering devices, and
	custom data feed to charts. The BIRT reporting tool uses charting engine to support chart report items.</p>
	<h5>Chart Engine</h5>
	<p>The chart engine component generates device-independent charts by processing an EMF-based chart model, defined in XML.</p>
	<h5>Chart Builder</h5>
	<p>The chart builder provides a graphical user
	interface for the user to define charts interactively.
	The chart builder framework has extension points to
	support extending the user interface to create new chart types. </p>
	<p> </p>
	</div>

	<div id="section_header">Core Components</div>
	<div class="content">
	<p> The BIRT core components provide common
	infrastructure services for the BIRT platform.
	These services include:
	<ul>
	<li> Logging</li>
	<li>Exception handling </li>
	<li>An internationalization framework</li>
	<li>Data type string formatting functions</li>
	<li>A scripting framework
	</ul>
	</p>
	<p> </p>

	</div>
	<div id="copyright"></div>
	</body>
	</html>