BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting (Paperback)

~ (Author), Alethea Hannemann (Author), Nola Hague (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A new edition of this title is available, ISBN-10: 0321580273 ISBN-13: 9780321580276

 

The first in a two-book series about Business Intelligence and Reporting Technology, BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting introduces reporting to a broad base of users. Built on the Eclipse platform, this exciting technology makes it possible for programmers and non-programmers to build and deploy complex reports with minimal effort.

BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting presents information about how to develop and customize reports of progressive complexity using BIRT Report Designer. This tool was designed from the ground up for Web applications and uses a Web page-oriented design metaphor in contrast to older banded report writers that were developed before the advent of the Internet. This unique approach to report creation makes BIRT an approachable and effective tool for developers of all levels.

Report designs discussed include

• Listing reports that include sorting, grouping, and totals

• Summary reports, such as top N reports

• Charts, including pie, line, bar, and gauge charts

• Master-detail reports

Other topics discussed include

• Understanding the technology

• Planning report designs

• Accessing data

• Laying out and formatting reports

• Building charts

• Enhancing reports with interactive viewing, shared libraries, and localized text

• Preparing reports for international data

About the Author

The authors are members of the extended BIRT development team and have backgrounds in both computer science and technical writing. Collectively, they have 165 years of technical consulting, training, writing, and publishing experience about reporting, business intelligence tools, and database technologies. They have published forty-two titles on these topics through numerous editions.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (November 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321442598
• ISBN-13: 978-0321442598
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #709,399 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This item is part of The Eclipse Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars birt - a field guide: the title speaks for itself, December 30, 2006

By	Jeanne Boyarsky (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

"BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting" is a great tutorial for learning how to use BIRT. BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools" is described including its relationship to Eclipse. After covering how to install BIRT, the book goes into great detail on how to use the report designer.

The target audience should be familiar with HTML, SQL and JavaScript as stated in the introduction. The book describes functions used, but you are expected to know the basic syntax.

As expected, the book covers how to use each of the features of BIRT. They are all described with step by step instructions. There are also a few tutorials walking you through the process from start to finish. I liked the "how to" style for tasks.

The book includes tips on how to plan a report and what to consider. It also includes common code snippets that you may want to use and lists available functions.

I was particularly impressed with the abundance of screenshots and the excellent glossary. If you are thinking about using BIRT, this book is a valuable addition to your library.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible power at an exceptional price... free!, November 27, 2006

By	Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Every once in awhile, I get to review a book on a technology or software package I've not heard of before. That was the case with BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting by Diana Peh, Alethea Hannemann, and Nola Hague. I'm stunned at the quality and depth of this open-source Eclipse reporting tool. Oh, and the book's pretty good, too... :)

Contents:
Part 1 - Installing BIRT: Prerequisites for BIRT; Installing a BIRT Report Designer; Updating a BIRT Installation
Part 2 - Getting Started: Learning the Basics; Planning Your Report
Part 3 - Connecting to a Data Source; Retrieving Data; Binding Data
Part 4 - Designing Reports: Laying Out a Report; Displaying Text; Formatting Report Content; Sorting and Grouping Data; Aggregating Data; Writing Expressions; Filtering Data; Enabling the User to Filter Data; Building a Report That Contains Subreports; Using a Chart in a Report; Displaying Data in Charts; Laying Out and Formatting a Chart
Part 5 - Enhancing Reports: Designing a Multipage Report; Adding Interactive Viewing Features; Building a Shared Report Development Framework; Localizing Text; Glossary; Index

BIRT stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, and it runs on the Eclipse platform. Running as a plug-in or using the Rich Client Platform, BIRT will allow the user to create reports from various data sources like JDBC-enabled databases, text files, and XML files. The authors start out with the basics on how to download and install the software (it's dead simple). Then using a few tutorial exercises and plenty of screen prints, they walk you through the basics of connecting to a data source and building a report. The features available in BIRT seem endless, and I was completely amazed at the quality and depth that the software offers for both simple and complex report generation. Throughout the entire read, I kept thinking about a number of applications I wanted to try this out on. Normally to get something of this magnitude, you have to buy reporting packages that cost thousands. Peh, Hannemann, and Hague have completely twisted my world view when it comes to reporting. Great job!

The only thing that wasn't covered too much was how to roll this out to an end-user base without having to make your audience experts in Eclipse. It seems as if there must be some way to package these reports up to shield the user from the internals. There's a follow-on book that covers integration and extension of BIRT, and I'm hoping that deployment is covered more there. But that in no way takes away from the value and quality of what the authors did here...

This is subject matter that has me excited for some potentially cool applications. If things work the way I hope they will, I'll owe a debt of gratitude to this book...

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Text, November 23, 2008

By	Michael Colletti "AvidReader" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

I am not a reports guy. I have a project that I needed to get some familiarity quickly. There are great online resources from the eclipse and birt-exchange websites but I needed more depth. This text was great for that and as a desk reference. Well written and clearly presented material makes this text worthy.

I'm still not a reports guy but now at least I have a shot at getting through the project.