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Upgrade to 3.7

bogey

Taking a look at upgrading BIRT 2.3.1 to 3.7 
 
I am getting a NPE trying to start the Birt Report Engine. 
This is the line of code that causes it: 
<pre class='_prettyXprint _lang-auto _linenums:0'>
IReportEngineFactory factory =
(IReportEngineFactory) Platform.createFactoryObject( IReportEngineFactory.EXTENSION_REPORT_ENGINE_FACTORY );

birtEngine = factory.createReportEngine( config ); // factory is null
</pre>
 
From my extensive searching, it seems that the migration entails putting all jars in the web-inf/lib and removing setBirtHome(). It seems many issues arise from jar collisions. I noticed something else odd (which is described below), but still went through every jar to check for collisions/duplicate classes. I think I have it pretty clean, but there are tons of jars in the lib folder as this is an OpenReports deployment with a Birt Provider. I have debugged through the above lines of code and I am not convinced that they are correct as many posts regarding 3.7 say that osgi isn't used and stepping into the classes yields osgi references. If the code above is a known/observed problem, let me know what I can do differently. 
 
The oddity I observed. 
<ul class='bbc'><li>IReportEngineFactory: 
birt-runtime-3_7_0\ReportEngine\lib\org.eclipse.birt.runtime_3.7.0.v20110615-1818.jar\org\eclipse\birt\report\engine\api\IReportEngineFactory.class</li><li> src: birt-source-3_7_0.zip\plugins\org.eclipse.birt.report.engine\src\org\eclipse\birt\report\engine\api\IReportEngineFactory.java 
<pre class='_prettyXprint _lang-auto _linenums:0'>
package org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api;

/**
* a factory used to create the Report Engine.
*
* @see the ReportRunner for the usage.
*/
public interface IReportEngineFactory
{

/**
* the extension point used to create the factory object.
*
* @see org.eclipse.birt.core.framework.Platform#createFactoryObject(String)
*/
static final String EXTENSION_REPORT_ENGINE_FACTORY = "org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.ReportEngineFactory";

/**
* create a new report engine object.
*
* @param config
* config used to create the report engine.
* @return the report engine object
*/
IReportEngine createReportEngine( EngineConfig config );
}

</pre></li></ul>
 
The variable EXTENSION_REPORT_ENGINE_FACTORY points to: 
org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.ReportEngineFactory 
 
But, the ReportEngineFactory doesn't exist there. Its path is: 
org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.impl.ReportEngineFactory.java 
 
Seems odd to me, but maybe it is irrelevant and taken care of if I wasn't **** something else up. I'll continue digging, but am running out of ideas. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, 
 
Larry

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Comments

JasonW

Larry,

That is just an id name. The platform uses a factory extension point to create the report engine, data engine, and design engine. If you look at the plugin.xml for the report engine plugin you will see the extension point correlation:

<extension
id="ReportEngineFactory"
name="ReportEngineFactory"
point="org.eclipse.birt.core.FactoryService">
<factory class="org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.impl.ReportEngineFactory"/>
</extension>

While the new runtime does not use an OSGi runtime per say (BTW designer still uses full OSGi) it does use the same mechanisms so plugins implmenting extension points should still work.

Do you have a full stack trace on the error?

Jason

bogey

Thanks, Jason. 
 
I tracked through the extension registry and just wasn't seeing/didn't put the time in to find connection. 
 
I have attached a text file of the jboss log which shows the exception I am getting. I was fixing classpath issues causing exceptions leading up to the NPE. So, as a matter of course I was analyzing the exception, consequently not much else of the log. I noticed when deciding how much of the log to attach that we have a log statement showing (line 3 of the attached log) "platform is null". Perhaps this is a code flaw that needs to be updated with 3.7. Here, is the code that generates this log message in case it is of assistance. 
<pre class='_prettyXprint _lang-auto _linenums:0'>
IPlatformContext context = new PlatformServletContext( servletContext );
log.info( "in BirtProvider(ServletContext servletContext), platform is " + context.getPlatform() );
</pre>
 
The server log for our working BIRT 2.3.1 reads: 
<pre class='_prettyXprint _lang-auto _linenums:0'>
11:56:22,393 INFO [BirtProvider] in BirtProvider(ServletContext servletContext)
11:56:22,394 INFO [BirtProvider] org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContextFacade@292e7959
11:56:22,396 INFO [BirtProvider] in BirtProvider(ServletContext servletContext), platform is C:\software\jboss-5.0.1.GA\server\default\deploy\openreports
.war\WEB-INF\platform
11:56:22,396 INFO [BirtProvider] in BirtProvider(ServletContext servletContext), before startBirtEngine
11:56:22,398 INFO [BirtProvider] Starting BIRT Engine and OSGI Platform using: org.eclipse.birt.core.framework.PlatformServletContext
11:57:35,465 INFO [BirtProvider] BIRT Engine Started
11:57:35,465 INFO [BirtProvider] in BirtProvider(ServletContext servletContext), Finished with startBirtEngine is C:\software\jboss-5.0.1.GA\server\defau
lt\deploy\openreports.war\WEB-INF\platform
</pre>
 
I did delete web-inf/ sub-dirs (I believe platform, conf, and features) at some point while reading through posts to fix my environment as it was suggested. Perhaps, I misread something there. 
 
Thoughts? 
 
Thanks!

JasonW

Larry,

Technically I do not think the PlatformServletContext is needed with 3.7. In the web-inf, the only folder you should have is the lib folder with the 3.7 runtime/reportengine/libs. I have a web app that I deployed to JBoss using birt 3.7 and I am not getting this issue. Any chance you could try to deploy the 3.7 viewer to your appserver as a test?

Jason

bogey

Perhaps there is a more approriate way to initialize BIRT 3.7 than the way it is being done in OpenReports which is using BIRT 2.3.1. 
 
My web-inf folder contains 3 folders, but no birt folders and obviously, I copied the jars to my web-inf/lib dir except where i found conflicts: 
- lib 
- jpivot 
- wcf 
 
Birt Viewer deploys fine on same server. 
 
<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="'JasonW'" data-cid="82755" data-time="1316021066" data-date="14 September 2011 - 10:24 AM">
Larry, 
 
Technically I do not think the PlatformServletContext is needed with 3.7. In the web-inf, the only folder you should have is the lib folder with the 3.7 runtime/reportengine/libs. I have a web app that I deployed to JBoss using birt 3.7 and I am not getting this issue. Any chance you could try to deploy the 3.7 viewer to your appserver as a test? 
 
Jason </blockquote>

JasonW

I have an example servlet that works for me. I am attaching it. It needs the BIRT 3.7 runtime/reportengine/libs and servlet-api.jar in the web-inf/lib.

Jason

bogey

bah, preview just lost my post...that always sucks. 
 
I got the server to startup exception free by adding the /conf, /features, & /plugins folders back into web-inf/platform. 
 
So, my current environment state for OpenReports BIRT 2.3.1 to 3.7.0 upgrade was achieved by the following: 
<ul class='bbcol decimal'><li> delete all web-inf/lib birt-2.3.1-*.jar s</li><li> delete /conf, /features, & /plugins folders in web-inf/platform directory</li><li> prefix all jars at birt-runtime-3_7_0\ReportEngine\lib with "birt-3.7.0-"</li><li> copy all now prefixed birt jars to web-inf/lib</li><li> resolve all jar conflicts created by the 78 birt 3.7 jars 
- From memory, I found conflicts with the following jars: 
<ul class='bbc'><li>xerces.jar</li><li>commons-cli.jar</li><li>commons-codec.jar</li><li>batik*.jar</li><li>aopalliance.jar</li><li>derby.jar</li><li>sac.jar</li><li>javax.wsdl.jar</li></ul></li><li> copy the /conf, /features, & /plugins folders in birt-rcp-report-designer-3_7_0.zip to web-inf/platform directory</li></ul>
 
Step 5 is key. I cleaned up the documented xerces.jar jboss conflict, but then I got pretty turned around trying to resolve other exceptions via forum searches. After cleaning teh remaining jar conflicts in my environment, I was left with a variety of possible "fixes".
 
All that being said, is my current environment stable with BIRT 3.7, Jason? Should I be able to get it running without the web-inf/platform directory? (this I am not sure about as I inherited this OpenReports deployment...

) Do you have any recommendations as to improvements before I move forward? 
 
Thanks! 
 
Larry

JasonW

Larry,

The platform directory should not be in the install. If files are being written to the web-inf/platform/configuration directory I believe you still have a conflict with the runtime trying to use older style OSGi deployment.

Jason

bogey

Ok, I will use the information you have provided to try to get it running without the /platform directory then. Thanks.

antony.s

We're trying to do the same thing (get BIRT 3.7 working in OpenReports) - did you have any luck?

bogey

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="'antony.s'" data-cid="84973" data-time="1320680517" data-date="07 November 2011 - 08:41 AM">
We're trying to do the same thing (get BIRT 3.7 working in OpenReports) - did you have any luck? </blockquote>
 
Yes. We are up and running. My biggest problem was all of the forums and google searches I was reading

I would get an error, try a new idea, get a new error (but, the previous change [which sounded necessary, but maybe wasn't] was really causing the issue). So, I ended up backing out and starting over based on Jason saying "Just do these x simple things and it should work." 
 
Steps 1-5 (step 2: just delete the /platform dir entirely) from my Sep. 14th post should get the job done for you without changing any OpenReports source code for BIRT...which is pretty cool. 
 
Though, I think I did miss (at least) one jar conflict (itext) and some of our BIRT reports (those with images?) are throwing exceptions because of it. So, that is an important step (resolving jar conflicts).

antony.s

Thanks for the positive reply, we'll try to do the same

What exactly do you mean by the jar conflicts? Having multiple versions of the same jar, and removing the older version

bogey

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="'antony.s'" data-cid="85037" data-time="1320760551" data-date="08 November 2011 - 06:55 AM">
Thanks for the positive reply, we'll try to do the same 
 
What exactly do you mean by the jar conflicts? Having multiple versions of the same jar, and removing the older version </blockquote>
 
 
Exactly (though 2 identical jar versions may also cause conflicts [only one will be loaded, and it might not be the one that would be accessible everywhere it needs to be]). As I took over our reporting department and we have several in-house features added to OpenReports (and we run on jboss), I can't be certain that our class loading is identical and you will have the same conflicts. 
But, for example, the first error (of many) I got: 
- xerces.jar 
<ul class='bbc'><li> - jboss already has a xercesImpl.jar (JBOSS_HOME/lib/endorsed)</li><li> - birt.3.7.0 includes the following jar: org.apache.xerces_2.9.0.v201101211617.jar</li><li> - when I started the application server, I was getting SAX parser errors, I believe. And, they were caused by this jar conflict. I removed "org.apache.xerces_2.9.0.v201101211617.jar" from WEB-INF/lib for 3 reasons: 
<ul class='bbcol decimal'><li> - quicker than investigating how jboss uses the jar</li><li> - jboss/lib/endorsed/xercesImpl.jar/META-INF/MANIFSET.MF had the following lines which led me to believe it was "newer" and therefore "better": 
</li><li> - Implementation-Version: 2.9.1</li><li> - Comment: Xerces-J 2.9.1: .</li></ul></li><li> - restarting the OpenReports server yielded a new error to chase down (ie. it worked)</li></ul>

So, you can take more or less care to hunt down how to resolve exceptions from class conflicts, but that can take a very long time. I usually did just remove the older jar. 
 
Hope that helps.

antony.s

Fortunately I do not get any errors when starting the server (tomcat5.5, simply taking the vanilla openreports-3.2 bundle and replacing birt-2.3 with birt-3.7), but instead get errors when doing specific things

e.g. running a simple report of just one datasource, dataset (a simple select) and displaying in table

java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.IReportRunnable.setDesignHandle(Lorg/eclipse/birt/report/model/api/ReportDesignHandle;)V

or uploading a report through the interface

java.lang.SecurityException: class "org.apache.commons.io.output.ByteArrayOutputStream"'s signer information does not match signer information of other classes in the same package

The latter I guess is from a conflict, but the former I have no idea.

And to be certain, I should not do step 6, right?

bogey

nope, no step 6.

jihene

Hi, I need to upgrade birt from 2.3.2 to 4.2.I followed your instructions,but now when trying to export my reports to xlsx, i'm facing the following exception : "org.eclipse.birt.engine.api.UnsupportedFormatException : the output format xlsx is not supported"NB: i have the poi jar in my classpath..i don't not if this ken help you.. Thanks in advance