A review of the Actuate BIRT reporting tool set with tutorials and examples from an end users perspective plus comparisons between the open source Eclipse version and the commercial Actuate version. <br />
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After a great start with the free open source Birt reporting tools in the Eclipse IDE, it was time to download and install the Actuate Birt Reporting implementation and see what the difference was. I started out by taking a look at Birt-Exchange.com and found that there were several download options available so I had to make selections as to the best package components to download for review. Luckily there are some good online resources, including feature comparison charts where you can read up on the details of the different packages and where you can watch some BIRT videos showing the various elements of functionality contained in the different downloads. <br />
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After looking at the various Birt reporting examples the components I eventually settled on were: <br />
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BIRT Designer Professional <br />
Interactive Report Viewer <br />
iServerExpress <br />
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The downloads were a little hefty and it took an hour or so to get all the files but after that the installation was straight forward and I was up and running with the Actuate Birt report designer in no time. This allowed me plenty of time to look at some of the features, tutorials and examples of this report designer and compare them to the open source designer. Essentially they are very similar so if you are familiar with the BIRT perspective within Eclipse then you will pick this up very quickly. If you need an introduction to Eclipse then please see my earlier reports which are available from my web site. Having downloaded the Birt Reporting Actuate packages I ran through a few examples following some online Birt reporting tutorials and my existing experience of the Eclipse open source implementation. On the way I encountered a few little problems but found that I could figure out and implement a solution pretty quickly with only limited reference to the excellent online help being necessary. <br />
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Here is a list of the things I attempted: <br />
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Creating a project <br />
Creating a report within the project<br />
Creating a joint data source based on two separate data sources <br />
Applying filters to the data source <br />
Adding data to the report <br />
Grouping data <br />
Augmenting an existing data set <br />
Simple report formatting <br />
Computed columns <br />
Flash charts <br />
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In conclusion the Actuate Birt report designer is an excellent piece of software which adds some nice touches to the open source version. I found myself going back to the pure Eclipse Birt implementation and feeling a little lost without the extras. Actuate have put a lot of thought and consideration about the end user experience into this and it is highly recommended. To access the full version of this report on PDF with full step by step instructions and screen shots please visit <a class='bbc_url' href='
http://www.BirtReporting.com'>BIRT Reporting Articles, News and Support</a> and signup for your free site membership. This is a complete guide to getting started with the commercial implementation of Actuate BIRT featuring detailed usage instructions for the software features indicated above and draws many comparisons between the open source version and the commercial version.
