Stand Alone Java API needs reporting system included

I am working on a project for the gov, that requires a standalone JAVA API. I can't be attached to a server, or require additional installation of a BIRT Runtime engine. I was wondering if their is a JAR library that works as a Runtime Engine would that can be imported at the time of compilation. And... is this it? birt-2.3.2-engineapi.jar

We've been on the Jasper Reports train for the past two months only to have run into the final stake in the heart. The reports are large and clunky and require to much in resources. So far one of the reports I created using Jasper which is well over 1 MG is only 358KB in BIRT. This makes me really happy. I'm short on time and money since this is a USMC project and we don't want to go down another costly road. Is this reporting architecture able to integrate into a Stand alone API or will I have to have the birt-runtime-2_1_0 install on every Marine's laptop in afghanistan in order to run a reports? It won't happen if that is the case.

Regards,

rushtonjj

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CBR

Hi,

i won't use BIRt 2.1 for a new reporting project. The reason for that is that it is a very old version. There are so many things that changed during that release that reports that were built with 2.1 probably won't work in the newest version of BIRT (From BIRt 2.1 to BIRt 2.2 the project broke backward compatibility).

The installation of the BIRt runtime is not a real installation. You just need to unzip the birt runtime to any folder on that machine (it can be even a subfolder of your own application)
Starting with BIRT 3.7.1 BIRT changed the default deployment model and now offers a few jar files that have to be in your classpath. So no additional files required.
The other option would be to run a server somewhere that is running all the reports. The clients access them via a built in browser window (or they download PDF files from the server and display them in a new window).
This approach has multiple advantages/disadvantages:

+ you only need to deploy the birt runtime on the server (your clients stay thin...keep in mind that your app will grow by 100MB even in newest deployment model)
+ reports only need to be available in one location: The server
+ it is quite easy to update BIRT on the server...if it is on all the clients you have to think about rollout of new reports to all the client machines
+ clients can be very weak machines (if you run BIRT on the client it needs to have a certain amount of RAM on some decent CPU)
- clients need to have internet access...otherwise no reports!
- you have to think about failover, load balancing for reporting server
- it is too complicate if the data for the report is coming from the specific client machine only

Note: sorry forgot that you already mentioned that you can't depend on some server because you most likely have no internet access somewhere in afghanistan :-) I ll remain the post as is...perhaps there are some useful information in it anyways

rushtonjj

Hi, well in fact we are only authorized up to BIRT 2.1 and no further. We are under stiff regulations when it comes to software. Which is why I'm asking if I need to have the runtime because the USMC has not authorized BIRT at all. If I have to use a runtime application for those reports, I will not be able to use this application. If all I had to do was import the jars and instantiate some objects that would be fine, but additional applications that are not approved are forbidden. It also can take a year or more to get something like this approved and added to the masses of laptops and PCs.

The internet is not an option, so servers are out. I was hoping you could tell me that we had a way to do this all encompassing under one application hat. Do you have any other suggestions I could use?

Thank you in advance.

rushtonjj

rushtonjj

Actually, they liked your answer. I was over scrutinizing it. So... thank you so much. I really appreciate the time you took to explain the options to me.

V/r

rushtonjj