From MIKE2 Methodology
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| This article is currently Under Construction. It is undergoing major changes as it is in the early stages of development. Users should help contribute to this article to get it to the point where is ready for a Peer Review.
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BIRT (acronym for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) is an Eclipse-based open source reporting system for Web applications that allows you to generate reports from various data sources: databases, XML documents, EJBs, Web services, JavaBeans, and POJOs.
BIRT has two main components: a report designer based on Eclipse, and a runtime component that you can add to your app server. BIRT also offers a charting engine that lets you add charts to your own application. The current released version is 2.1.2.
Relationship to MIKE2.0
SAFE Architecture
- Used to deliver the BI sub-component
Overall Implementation Guide
BI Design and Implementation Activities of MIKE2.0, which are:
Alignment with Strategic Requirements for Infrastructure Development
Product Review
Key Features
- BIRT reports support data supplied by databases, web services, and Java objects.
- BIRT (release 2.1.2) also supports JDBC and XML, and code to get at other sources of data.
- BIRT's use of the Open Data Access (ODA) framework allows anyone to build new UI and runtime support for any kind of tabular data. A single report can include data from any number of data sources.
- BIRT supports combination of disparate data sources through using inner and outer joins.
- Business logic can be scripted specifically for a report using BIRT's JavaScript support. If application already contains the logic, you can call into your existing Java code.
- Tables, charts, text and more can be presented. A single data set can appear in multiple ways, and a single report can present data from multiple data sets.
- Supports lists, charts, crosstabs (release 2.2), letters and documents and compound reports
Pros
- Free
- Because BIRT is Eclipse-based, it does not need to be integrated with an IDE. It's easy to use in comparison to other reporting tools like JasperReports, which is a Java API and requires a Java application to run
- A report produced in BIRT may be output as a PDF document or an HTML document.
- BIRT allows sophisticated operations such as grouping on sums, percentages of overall totals and more.
- BIRT charts can be rendered in SVG and support events to allow user interaction.
- BIRT allows you to can sort, filter, and group data in a report as well as add business-specific logic using JavaScript
- BIRT allows you to implement runtime integration using the Report Engine API. This allows you to run BIRT reports directly from Java code.
- With runtime integration, you view your BIRT report in the BIRT Viewer, which you can install in an application server or access via a URL.
- There is also a supported version branded as Actuate BIRT
Cons
- Issues surrounding scalability and enterprise wide large scale reporting
- Pentaho (also based around BIRT) incorporates features to possibly be more effective on an enterprise wide level
Desired Enhancements
Functonality that users of the MIKE2.0 Methodology would like to see added to this product are as follows:
User Valuation Enhancements
Voting scores from MIKE2.0 Contributors on the value of the asset in the context of the overall methodology
Usage
Product Access
BIRT Download available from product website
Open Source Licensing
Comparable Open Source Products
Reference Implementations through MIKE2.0
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