REP - Reporting

REP is an optional itmSUITE® module that defines functionality to manage and excute reports created by Eclipse BIRT Designer tool.
It allows to load one or more report templates (BIRT.rptdesign file) and to create and to execute report instances through the BIRT Viewer integrated on itmSUITE®.

BIRT Architecture

BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tool)is an open source tool installed as Eclipse IDE plug-in for report developing. It has origin from collaboration between Actuate (along with IBM) and Eclipse.org open source community.
BIRT is a Java based tool that allows to extract data from many data source types for report generation in several output format (pdf, xlsx, docx, etc.).

Birt Architecture

BIRT architecture includes two main components:

1. Report Designer: a UI component to create report template (.rptdesign file)
2. Report Engine: runtime component for report rendering

The Design Engine generates a .rptdesign file(in XML format) structured according to configurations applied by user (by BIRT Designer) and the Report Engine, through BIRT Viewer, parses it and renders it as report in html (or other formats).

BIRT Designer

BIRT Designer is a tool (plug-in) integrated to the Eclipse IDE that defines a user friendly interface to create BIRT report. It can be enabled from toolbar on Windows > Open Perspective > Report Design. BIRT Designer is composed of several Eclipse views to create/configure a report:

View	Meaning
Data Explorer	Allows the data management extracted from a specific data source (i.e. database, xlsx file, cvs file, etc.) in order to define data sets and parameters report
Navigator	A projects management view. Every project contains one or more report template.
Layout	Main editor in which user can drag/drops and manages report items to define output report layout
Palette	Contains all graphic report items (label, table, chart, etc...) to add to report layout
Property Editor	Menu from which user can configure report items properties
Scripting Editor	Editor available for each report items in which insert event drivern JavaScript/Java code
Report Preview	View on which launch a report preview with a limited extracted data

Birt Report Creation

In BIRT Designer all reports can be created as list, charts, crosstab, textual document or as combination of these items. Report contains a bottom-up structure at 4 levels:

1. Data: report data extraceted from several data source types (database, raw file, cvs, etc...)
2. User Data: data extracted from data source are edited according user needs (i.e, data type changing)
3. Business Logic: data elaborated according to event driven script (JavaScript/Java code)
4. Prensentation: data bound to report items (table columns, chart series, dynmic label, etc...)