Deploying BIRT for webapps

edwardiv

Hi all,
Can someone point me in the right direction for how to deploy BIRT in tomcat (which I guess would be similar for most other web servers) such that any other context (app deployed as a .war) can use the same reporting engine, etc?

I currently only know how to get it to work if I copy all of the BIRT jar files, plugins, configuration, etc. into each web app (.war) that gets deployed, which creates a huge amount of duplication and big .war files.

Thanks in advance,
Edward

cypherdj

Hi Edward,

there are 2 levels of deployment that you could consider, but which you will end up choosing depends on your specific reporting requirements.

First of all, you could simply deploy the ExampleWebViewer which is a standalone web application. This would allow you to redirect your users to the BIRT report that they request, by adding the relevant parameters. If this solves your needs then great, it will not require any implementation on your part, unless you also have security concerns.

Of course, you might serve different independent applications, which have different colour schemes, and this first option might not be suitable. In this case, what I would recommend is to deploy the BIRT APIs wrapped into web services.

To my knowledge, that sounds like the 2 possible options, but if you expand a bit on what your specific requirements are, for instance what report formats do you want to support? will you need user input in selecting parameters? how will report be presented to the user (online, download)?

Regards,
Cedric