Report creation time in BIRT

Hi, 
I am new to BIRT, does any one can tell me how the methods (initialize, before factory, after factory, before render and after render) flows while executing a report? 
I want to record the time, a report usually takes to display after clicking on the report till it displayed to the user. Which need to include database i/o and report processing time. Please suggest me how do i proceed? 
I found this link <a class='bbc_url' href='http://eclipse.org/birt/ref/rom/elements/ReportDesign.html#Method-initialize'>Report Design Element (Eclipse BIRT ROM Documentation)</a> , but did not able to capture the flow exactly from this. 
 
cheers, 
Partha

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Virgil Dodson

Hi Partha, I did a presentation on scripting that talked about the order or events in BIRT. You can download that presentation from <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.birt-exchange.org/devshare/designing-birt-reports/810-eclipsecon-2009-advanced-birt-report-customization/#description'>EclipseCon 2009 Advanced BIRT Report Customization - Designs & Code - BIRT Exchange</a> 
 
You will also find an example in there that logs the event order to a log file. You could easily modify this to add a timestamp too.

pratim

Hi, thanks for the info. I executed the report that logs the event order to a log file. But the log file does not hold any information, it's blank. What i felt is that, you are opening the log file in initialize method and closing it in afterfactory method.So, its not able to print anything. I outputed the timestamp using a simple java code for each method, which says beforeFactory method executed first then afterFactory then initialize and followed by beforeRender and afterRender method. 
 
<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="vdodson">Hi Partha, I did a presentation on scripting that talked about the order or events in BIRT. You can download that presentation from <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.birt-exchange.org/devshare/designing-birt-reports/810-eclipsecon-2009-advanced-birt-report-customization/#description'>EclipseCon 2009 Advanced BIRT Report Customization - Designs & Code - BIRT Exchange</a> 
 
You will also find an example in there that logs the event order to a log file. You could easily modify this to add a timestamp too.</blockquote>

Virgil Dodson

Hi Pratim, that version will write a log file only when you press Preview in the designer. I've updated that same file to write out under any task... and will append new data to the log file. 
 
The new version was created in BIRT 2.5.1 and can be downloaded from <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.birt-exchange.org/devshare/designing-birt-reports/1196-birt-scripting-event-order-to-log-file/#description'>BIRT Scripting Event Order to Log File - Designs & Code - BIRT Exchange</a>

pratim

hi,
I am able to print the generation time and rendering time in a log file for testing purpose. I can understand, rendering time cannot be displayed in the report document as this is the time that gets printed after the report is displayed. But can we print the Generation time in the Report document (header or footer part) itself, because Generation time is calculated well before rendering time? If we can display Generation time then how to proceed ?

pratim

if i need to get the generation time from the log file and need to display in the report, can i make use of parameters, i.e, if i create a parameter named "generationTime" and use the expression builder to assign the value as "params["generationTime"].value". But for this to work out, i need to assign the generation time to the parameter "generationTime". So, i wrote this command "params["generationTime"].value = gen_time;" , where gen_time is the variable which contains generation time.

So, my doubt is where(under which adapter [initialize,beforeFactory,afterFactory,beforeRender,afterRender]) i need to place the command params["generationTime"].value = gen_time; , because when i place this under initialize, it accesses the old generation time and in other methods it displays null.