Continuing my journey into BIRT Reporting I install the iServer Express,<br />
find an excellent online guide and follow it to view reports, modify reports<br />
and save the modified versions in my own user area on the iServer.<br />
<br />
Article:<br />
<br />
It's only been a few weeks since I first saw BIRT in action and in only a<br />
limited amount of time I have found that I was able to easily get started<br />
with the Open Source (free of charge) version and then moved on to compare<br />
some of the differences with the Actuate commercial version.<br />
<br />
During this time I noticed that Actuate had BIRT extension products which<br />
allow the user to design their own reports over the web, manage their<br />
reports, view reports created by others and make modifications to those<br />
reports at runtime.<br />
<br />
In this short report I take a look at two of those components, the<br />
iServerExpress and the BIRT Interactive viewer.<br />
<br />
Having been able to easily create and run reports using the open source<br />
products I was a little confused as to what else the additional product<br />
offerings could do for me and in this report I set aside 2 hours on a<br />
Saturday to find out.<br />
<br />
One point I would like to mention at this stage, is that many people I have<br />
been speaking to recently about BIRT tell me that that are too short of time<br />
to spend enough time learning and getting to know BIRT. I understand the<br />
time pressures people are under and one of the things that has impressed me<br />
the most about BIRT is how quickly I have been able to learn a surprising<br />
amount about it. All you need to do it give yourself a few hours a week and<br />
follow these guides available from <br />
<br />
<a class='bbc_url' href='
http://www.BIRTReporting.com'>BIRT Reporting Articles, News and Support</a><br />
<br />
and the other excellent material which can be found at <br />
<br />
<a class='bbc_url' href='
http://www.Birt-Exchange.com'>BIRT Exchange</a><br />
<br />
and you will be up and running in no time. <br />
<br />
Often the hardest step on any journey is the first, so put a note in your<br />
diary, block out an hour of time this week to spend in the company of this<br />
wonderful report writer and see where your journey takes you!<br />
<br />
Staying with the subject of time shortages for a moment, one of the great<br />
things about iServerExpress is the fact that it is a tool that is designed<br />
to save you time. Having been involved with many organizations with fairly<br />
large user communities I cant help but notice that users' demands for<br />
reports can eat time away from the IT department like it is going out of<br />
fashion. Also, with so many reports and variations of reports floating<br />
around an organization in different formats and created using different<br />
tools this is an area that is quite difficult to keep track of easily.<br />
<br />
iServerExpress solves both of these problems by allowing you to publish your<br />
reports to a central location that is available to the whole organization or<br />
selected users depending on their security permissions. This keeps all the<br />
reports in one place and means that you can easily direct a user to the<br />
correct location when they need that urgent report.<br />
<br />
Also, after a while you will have built up quite an impressive report<br />
repository on the iServer so the majority of users last minute urgent<br />
request should be able to be met by a report from your library. Sometimes of<br />
course you might have to make small amendments to one of your standard<br />
library reports in order to meet a specific request. This is where<br />
iServerExpress lends you another helping hand as the user can select a<br />
report which is similar to what they need and then make their own minor<br />
modifications to it using the interactive viewer, then save the modified<br />
version into their own personal report library.<br />
<br />
Great for the end user because they don't have to depend (and wait) on<br />
someone from IT to create their report for them and great for IT because the<br />
number of end user report modification requests drops significantly.<br />
<br />
Once again, Actuate have clearly put some thought into this product and are<br />
solving actual users real world problems in an easy to learn and quick to<br />
implement technology solution.<br />
<br />
To download the complete version of this report in PDF format, with<br />
screenshots and some exercises to try out, to get you going with iServer<br />
Express please visit:<br />
<br />
<a class='bbc_url' href='
http://www.BirtReporting.com'>BIRT Reporting Articles, News and Support</a><br />
<br />
and get your free membership. You will then have full access to all my<br />
reports and guides to Birt Reporting.
