After having reviewed the freely available open source BIRT report designer and deployment options as well as the Actuate designer and iServerExpress and found these to be excellent products for designing reports that can then be deployed to a user community I am taking things a step further by looking at the Actuate BIRT Studio, which promises to allow end users the capability to design their own reports, over the web, whilst still being within the control of the IT department.<br />
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Actuate BIRT Studio is a commercial product and is available in a number of options. Essentially these are:<br />
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1. As a java component that you can deploy into your own application server e.g. Apache Tomcat<br />
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2. As part of an end user report writing portal, which basically includes a deployment kit and saves you the time and effort of creating your own deployment environment. <br />
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3. As an extension to the iServerExpress, allowing users to schedule their own reports in the iServer environment.<br />
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For full details and pricing see the Actuate Birt-Exchange website page here…<br />
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<a class='bbc_url' href='
http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/products/birt-report-designers/actuate-birt-designer-for-end-users/features/'>Actuate BIRT Report Studio</a><br />
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In order to allow user to create their own reports you first need to publish data sources for them to base their reports on. In Actuate these are called Information Objects, the name reflecting the fact that you are not exposing users to raw database tables and fields, but rather a set of tables and fields that you have prepared for them.<br />
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MULTIPLE SYSTEM REPORTING<br />
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An information object can contain data from several different sources. So long as there is a common field to link the independent data sources you can specify as many as you like, meaning that you can offer users data from different systems in a single unified view!<br />
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CLEAN DATA VIEWS<br />
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Once you have selected the basis for the data sources you can then rename fields so as to provide the user with field names that make sense to them in business terms, rather than in database terms. So if you have fields in your database such as AD_CD_1 (which might mean Address Code 1) you could rename this to Primary_Address_Code for example.<br />
You can also remove fields that the end user would have no interest in. For example any index fields or fields that simply exist to relate one record to another can be removed from the end user view.<br />
Finally you can add filters and grouping to the data, so for example if you have a large transaction table you could filter it by month or year, to provide sets of transactions that the user could select based on the type of report they want to create.<br />
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END USER WEB BASED REPORT DESIGN<br />
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Once you have created a series of Information Objects you can hand the job of creating reports over to your end user community. The report designer presents a clean, easy to understand and intuitive design environment to the end user directly in their web browser with no further software to install. <br />
I will be covering designing reports in a separate guide aimed fairly and squarely and end user report designers. <br />
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RETURN ON INVESTMENT<br />
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Whilst reviewing the commercial add-ons to BIRT I am constantly thinking about the additional value that these tools may or may not provide to the business community. When it is possible to do all of your reporting, over the web, using the freely available open source tools, then added value must be a consideration when thinking about spending money on additional commercial aspects of this software.<br />
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In thinking about this I have considered the work that an IT resource would have to undertake in agreeing the specification of reports with the business, writing the reports, maintaining the reports and making tweaks and adjustments as the business requires. When comparing this to the simple production of data sets, on which end users could write their own reports it is easy to see that the business case for the additional cost of iServerExpress and the BIRT Report Studio depends very much on two key factors.<br />
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1. The time spent by specialised and expensive IT resources in meeting user reporting demands.<br />
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2. The time users have to wait to get the reports they need.<br />
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Clearly the direct salary cost is not the only factor because the provision of the right information at the right time can be as far reaching as gaining a business a competitive edge or being able to give customers the information they need when they need it.<br />
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Every business is different and has different reporting needs and time scales. The BIRT stable of tools fits into practically any business because you can start of with a no cost simple solution and scale it incrementally as the business requirement dictates.<br />
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CONCLUSION<br />
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In creating this report I have looked closely at how IT resources would create and publish data to their end user community and allow those users to write reports based on that data. Once again I find that Actuate have put a lot of thought into the user experience and the Information Object designer is logical and easy to use. <br />
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Conceptually it breaks down the task of creating reports into distinct data and application layers and provides easy delimitation between the users of each part.<br />
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If your business demands warrant it then these tools provide an exceptional way to hand over business report generation to your user community. <br />
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I will be looking at how to actually create reports based on provided information objects in part two of this guide, so keep a look out for that in the near future.<br />
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LEARN MORE<br />
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For a full version of this guide with a walk through including screen shots of how to create information objects and for information about the BIRT User Group UK please visit <br />
<a class='bbc_url' href='
http://www.BIRTReporting.com'>BIRT Reporting Articles, News and Support</a><br />
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Please feel free to share this address with your colleagues and inspire them to use BIRT to create great looking reports.<br />
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I look forward to your feedback so please feel free to send me an email and let me know how you get on with BIRT, provide feedback on this guide, share your tips and tricks, or request help for specific problems. I can’t guarantee to personally solve everyone’s problems but there are some great BIRT related forums out there and you can find a growing list of links and resources on my site. <br />
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Warm regards<br />
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Paul Bappoo<br />
<a href='mailto:' title='E-mail Link' class='bbc_email'>Paul@BirtReporting.com</a><br />
<a class='bbc_url' href='
http://www.BIRTReporting.com'>BIRT Reporting Articles, News and Support</a>
