Embedded birt in app, push POJOs as data source

hedefalk

Hi,

I'm new to Birt and I am considering using it to generate a few reports from within my webapp. The reports will be highly customizable, such as defining at runtime which columns of a table are shown. I started out with DynamicJasper which seemed promising in this respect, but couldn't really deliver on rendering.

Anyway, my use case is that the user of my webapp defines a search for data and defines which columns are to be shown and then press a button to generate a PDF/XLS. I have this entire data search thing already done programmatically and don't want to redo anything of it in a special Birt-way. I want to push my data to a report design and render to an output stream strictly programmatically. So I've done a lot of googling and come to this conclusion:

* To be able to push data in the form of POJO:s I need to use a scripted data source, like in this resource: http://www.vogella.de/articles/EclipseBIRT/article.html
* The only way to not have to use a script in my report design is to pay for a special ODA: http://www.birt-exchange.org/org/forum/index.php/blog/3/entry-173-still-using-scripted-data-source-for-your-pojos/

* To add columns at runtime I could use the DE API as described here: http://www.birt-exchange.org/org/devshare/designing-birt-reports/1099-add-column-to-table-dynamically/


Are these conclusions correct, or are there any better resources for this?

Thanks in advance,
Viktor

hedefalk

Oh, sorry for the double post, but the first one seemed to be broken due to title/url-issues I would guess. I used ?? which the forum seems to choke on. Sorry for that.

Cheers,
Viktor