Friday, June 29, 2007

BIRT 2.2 Released

In conjunction with Eclipse’s Europa release BIRT 2.2 is now available. This release represents a significant improvement in features and functionality, including over 200 enhancements. Some of the more significant features include a new Cross Table element, that when constructed with the new data cubes technology allows the creation of dynamic tables with support for column and row aggregation, new emitters for XLS, PPT, DOC, and postscript formats, a new web service data access driver, improved charting with the addition of six new chart types, new web deployment wizards, and tag libraries for the BIRT web viewer and charting engine.

To read more about the new and improved features in BIRT 2.2 take a look at the New and Notable- BIRT 2.2

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

we have used birt for sometimes in a web application and it works well for us. Now, we decide continue to use it but in a standalone application(J2SE with Swing), where the application will be installed per Java Web Start on the client machine in its caching.

the question is whether it is possible to do it without forcing client to install birt-run-time previously on his machine by packaging all required birt-jar in the Application.jar. what is with engine_home ? how to set that in this case?

i have tried to find appropriate answer about it but without success until now.

thanks in advance.

regards
Peng

John Ward said...

Peng,

Yes, it is possible to embed the BIRT Report Engine into your application. It would get distributed as a set of JAR's or a single jar with your app.

In the case of how to set the Engine_Home, you would set it to yourr applications installation folder, or a libb folder under that.

Anonymous said...

We have been using a older version of BIRT but have not yet been able to replace our MSSQL Reporting Services solution due to performance issues (2-3 times the MSSQL RS)

Do you have any insight into how 2.2 compares to prior versions or even to Reporting Services?

Rob said...

Great to see release 2.2. I like the crosstab features for one.

I have issues with the runtime though. When running a report it complains that it is looking for a JTidy.jar that is not there in the release. Oddly the same report works when run from Eclipse.

Anonymous said...

john ward,

thanks for your helpful feedback.
i can make a single jar for birt_runtime.

But for Java Web Start application one requirement is that all application resources must be included in the JAR files, so i have to also package Birt_Home relevante files into a JAR file. In this case birt_home would then point to this e.p. birt_home.jar file. my tests show that will not work: birt_home=jar:file:/..birt_home.jar!

is there still some workaround ?

thanks in advance.
Peng

Anonymous said...

I have used ScriptedDataSetEventHandler with birt 2.1.2 and it works fine, but when i update birt now to 2.2 with Eclipse Eouopa it does not work as before. i can see in the EventHandler value is set per AppContext, but that is all, it will not be showed in the reult.

do i forget something to set?

thanks for your help!

Anonymous said...

Hi

i have just found the problem about prevoius described issue with dynamical generated metadata using ScriptedDataSetEventAdapter.

when i first time using ScriptedDataSetEventAdapter's describe method to add dynamical column instead of static metadata defined in the data set design, it will not work, means the output will not be printed in the resulting report file. after i use the static metadata defined in the data set design, it does work now, even when i come back to use describe method again and/or add new dynamical column.

any idea to this issue?

regards

Jason Weathersby said...

Can you log a bugzilla entry for this issue?

Jason

Anonymous said...

Jason,

i have log a bugzilla entry for this issue under number 196724.

regards

Anonymous said...

i try to use ResourceLocator setting in EngineConfig to find .rptdesign during call to engine.openReportDesign(designFile, IResourceLocator), but it does not work for me, in contrast it does work for other resource, f.g. image and properties.

can anybody help me?

thanks in advance

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