BIRT 4.2.1 Released

The BIRT team is pleased to announce the release of BIRT 4.2.1.  This point release fixes several issues including a data set parameter issue when using Oracle or MS SQL Server.  Additionally a bugzilla entry that involved Safari and Chrome viewing issues when the viewer is deployed to Weblogic has been fixed.  An RCP Designer startup issue has also been resolved and a bug with Joint Data Sets has been corrected.

When using a BIRT dataset within a report, BIRT automatically sets up a binding mapping between the dataset and the report item that will use the dataset.  The bindings are available in the Binding tab of the properties editor.  There are many reasons for using a binding mapping, but one main reason is to allow report item aggregations and computed columns.  These binding columns can not only source data from the data set but can also get data from external sources such as global JavaScript variables or external Java classes.  While this feature offers many benefits, one drawback has always been that if the data set was modified, bindings may become invalid.  In a previous release the team added a refresh button that would add missing columns to the binding map, but this approach did not clear invalid columns.  With this release a clear button has been added that allows a user to clear all the bindings that exist for a data bound report item.  So by clicking the clear button and then the refresh button all bindings will be recalculated.

To see a list of the bugzilla entries fixed in this release, take a look at this bugzilla query.