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MyEclipse Reports for BIRT Users |
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
MyEclipse Reports is an implementation of the Eclipse BIRT framework (BIRT) specialized to the MyEclipse web project conventions and directory layout, development workflow and deployment and testing features. This document describes the key conceptual and physical differences between MyEclipse Reports and BIRT. For a general overview of the report development and deployment features provided by MyEclipse Reports, see the MyEclipse Reports Overview.
1.1 Suggested Audience
This document is intended to provide users, familiar with the BIRT framework and tools, an overview, comparison and contrast between MyEclipse Reports and BIRT. If you do not have any prior BIRT experience, we recommend moving on to the MyEclipse Reports Quickstart guide.
2. MyEclipse Reports - Motivation, Scope and Forces
Industry statistics indicate that a majority of Java developers,
when required to develop an application report, resort to
expensive manually coded reports rather than employ specialized
report development tools. Additionally the majority of reports
developed these days have a web accessibility requirement. There
are numerous reasons for the lack of use of report development
tools but the net result is that there is a need to improve
the report development productivity of Java developers. MyEclipse
Reports fills this need by providing a rich feature set to help
developers rapidly create, deploy and test custom web application
reports. MyEclipse Reports is part of the MyEclipse -
Professional Edition product.
MyEclipse Reports is a specialized implementation of BIRT for
MyEclipse users. While compatibility with BIRT has been
maintained to the maximum degree possible, in order to provide
MyEclipse users the most familiar and productive development
experience BIRT was customized as follows:
-
All BIRT UI's have been reorganized to provide a cohesive and
seamless integration with the MyEclipse UI perspectives,
preferences and welcome and help information
- Report development is limited to MyEclipse web projects, i.e., Report Web Project; BIRT report projects and Eclipse Web Tools Projects are not supported
-
The default Myclipse Report web project folder structure is a
simplified and more intuitive version of the standard BIRT web
project layout
-
MyEclipse JDBC driver-based datasources replace ODA JDBC driver
datasources
- Replacement of the BIRT dataset query edtior to use the MyEclipse Database Explorer and SQL Editor for browsing and creation of SQL queries
-
MyEclipse validation framework keeps reports and MyEclipse JDBC
datasources synchronized
- MyEclipse Server Sandbox includes a Derby database server and sample schema; replaces the BIRT Derby database and schema
- Report web project deployment and testing uses the MyEclipse application server connectors for both exploded and packaged application WAR deployment
Warning!
We strongly recommend that you avoid installing MyEclipse Reports and BIRT into the same MyEclipse environment due to the potential for serious plugin conflict issues that can impede the operation of either product. See Section 9 for further discussion on this topic. TODO
Figure 2-1, MyEclipse Report Design Perspective
3. Project Types
3.1 Report Web Project
Section-2 highlighted the need for web accessible reports. Thus MyEclipse Reports is optimized towards providing a simple, intuitive project type know as the Report Web Project. In its simplest form you can think of this type of project as a conventional MyEclipse web project extended to include a meta-folder structure for design-time and runtime reports and web resources, datasource connection resources, web report viewing facilities and a deployable report engine. MyEclipse Reports provides wizards for creating new report web projects and adding report capabilities to existing MyEclipse web projects.
Figure 3-1, Quick launch report project wizard.
3.1.1 Report Web Project and WTP-BIRT Web Project Comparison
The most noticable difference between the MyEclipse report web
project and the WTP-BIRT web project are their respective
default project structures and library organization. The
following figure illustrates the clean simplicity of the
MyEclipse report web project organization when compared with that
of the WTP-BIRT web project structure.
Figure 3-2, WTP-BIRT project structure depicted (left) next to MyEclipse Reports project structure (right)
The WTP-BIRT project is an Eclipse Web Tools Platform project
enabled with an additional BIRT Reporting runtime facet. For WTP
deployment support and team sharing purposes the WTP-BIRT project
must contain the BIRT report engine and the BIRT web report
viewer component. The combined size of these runtime report
components when installed into a standard WTP-BIRT project is
approximately 30 MB.
A MyEclipse report web project is MyEclipse web project extended to support the report design-time tools and runtime report engine and report viewers. The roles of the project directories is defined in the web.xml deployment descriptor. Thus you can restructure the project any way you choose by manually adjusting the report-specific folders and then redefining their WebRoot relative path in the web.xml. Another key optimization of MyEclipse Reports is the avoidance of repeatedly bulking up every report web project with the 30 MB of report engine Jar libraries common to every WTP-BIRT project. MyEclipse report web projects use an advanced MyEclipse library container named "Report Web Libraries" to minimize the number of report engine resources that must be physically resident in the project at design-time. During a runtime deployment action, the MyEclipse web application deployer dynamicallly merges all of the Jar libraries from the Report Web Libraries container into the deployed version of the project as it is being published to the app-server. This optimization keeps the memory footprint of the report web project small and light-weight.
3.2 Unsupported BIRT Project Types
MyEclipse Reports does not directly support WTP-BIRT web projcets or standalone BIRT report projects. See Section-8 to learn more about porting WTP-BIRT projects to MyEclipse Report Web Projects.
4. User Interface Organization
In order to provide MyEclipse users a seamless, cohesive
development experience across all of its feature sets, MyEclipse
Reports reorganizes and integrates the key BIRT user interface
elements to conform with the MyEclipse UI conventions. Some of
the key BIRT UI changes include:
- BIRT Report Design Perspective replaced by MyEclipse Report Design Perspective
- BIRT Report Design preferences have been remapped under the MyEclipse preferences node
- BIRT new projects wizard has been replaced with MyEclipse Report Web Project wizard and the Add Report Capabilitites wizard. These wizards are organized under the MyEclipse wizards category.
-
BIRT help information has been reorganized and updated with
MyEclipse Reports specific help information, see the MyEclipse
Learning Center/Report Develpment node in the Help system.
Figure 4-1, New MyEclipse Report Wizard and MyEclipse Report Design Perspective
Figure 4-2, MyEclipse Reports Help
5. JDBC Driver Datasource Support
MyEclipse Reports enables the direct use of MyEclipse JDBC drivers as report datasources. The New Datasource wizard available from the Data Explorer view includes the MyEclipse JDBC driver option. During the report web project creation and configuration phase MyEclipse Reports installs a special MyEclipse JDBC ODA driver corresponding to a MyEclipse JDBC datasource. This ODA driver enables the BIRT report engine to recognize the MyEclipse JDBC datasource at runtime.
Figure 5-1, Data Source Wizard depicting MyEclipse JDBC Drivers
5.1 DTP JDBC Connection Profiles Unsupported
MyEclipse Database Explorer has long provided a superset of the
Eclipse DTP project features. Therefore MyEclipse does not
directly support DTP functionality. Because of this BIRT
DTP JDBC datasources is not supported MyEclipse Reports.
6. Derby Database Server and Sample Reports
MyEclipse 6 ships with the integrated MyEclipse Server Sandbox. The server sandbox includes an Integrated Tomcat 6 web server, Derby database server, example schema and preconfigured MyEclipse Derby JDBC driver. To take advantage of the Server Sandbox MyEclipse 6 incorporates a new online resource known as Examples On-Demand. This web site provides a suite of 1-click installable MyEclipse projects that demonstrate the use of popular Java EE and related technologies and frameworks. These example projects are designed to run on the MyEclipse Server Sandbox with zero configuration. The Example On-Demand hosts several example MyEclipse Reports projects that can be installed, deployed and run in 2-clicks.
Figure 6-1, MyEclipse Servers View depicting the Server Sandbox
Derby and Tomcat Servers
Figure 6-2, Integrated MyEclipse Examples On-Demand Browser
6.1 BIRT Derby Database and Sample Reports Unsupported
The MyEclipse Server Sandbox and Examples On-Demand are the
supported infrastructure and example demonstration mechanisms
supported by MyEclipse Reports. Therefore the BIRT embedded Derby
server and sample reports are not supported by MyEclipse Reports.
7. WTP-BIRT Web Project Porting Guidelines
Following is an outline of the process for creating a MyEclipse
Report Web Project equivalent of a WTP-BIRT web project. Before
you begin you should be familiar creating MyEclipse report web
projects and setting up MyEclipse JDBC driver-based data sources.
Step-1: Create a MyEclipse Report Web Project
Step-2: Copy the Java src folders and web content resources from
the WTP-BIRT project into their respective locations in the
MyEclipse project. Do not copy the report engine.
Step-3: For any report copied into the MyEclipse project
for which its dataset uses a DTP JDBC datasource you will need to
replace the DTP JDBC data source with a MyEclipse JDBC data
source. Thus create a MyEclipse JDBC driver and data source. Then
replace the DTP JDBC data source in each data source of the
MyEclipse project.
Step-4: Test each report in the Report Designer using the Preview
mode to ensure that the data-set is functioning properly. Correct
each error as you test the report.
8. MyEclipse Reports Installation Guidelines
While MyEclipse Reports is implemented using the BIRT framework
this does not imply that MyEclipse Reports and BIRT can be
installed into the same MyEclipse environment. The overlap
between the plugins of these two products when installed into
the same MyEclipse environment can cause serious plugin conflicts
that can impede the operation of both products. Therefore you
should only install one of these products per MyEclipse
Environment.
If your MyEclipse installation does not include MyEclipse Reports you can install this feature set using one of the following methods based on the method in which you installed MyEclipse:
- Community Essentials - If you installed MyEclipse using the All-In-One MyEclipse Installer or MyEclipse Plugin Installer then we recommend that you use the integrated MyEclipse Community Essentials Installer. To launch this installer use the menubar action, MyEclipse>Add Features... Once the installer launches and connects to the MyEclipse update site, MyEclipse Reports should appear as one of the installable product options.
Figure 8-1, MyEclipse Quick Install
- Pulse - If you installed MyEclipse using Pulse then we recommend you install MyEclipse Reports from the Pulse catalog. The Pulse installer will enable you to install and manage separate MyEclipse Reports and BIRT IDE profiles.
9. Feedback
We would like to hear from you! If you liked this tutorial, has some suggestions or even some corrections for us please let us know. We track all user feedback about our learning material in our Documentation Forum. Please be sure to let us know which piece of MyEclipse material you are commenting on so we can quickly pinpoint any issues that arise.