Using birt in an java web application

shazia

Hi,

i found about birt for a week ago, and been reading hard about how i best/easiset can implement birt in my java web application.

I am extremely grateful if some experience birt-developers can give some advice about the way forward using birt in a java web-application.

Here is my case:
Im working on a datawarehouse project. I need to develop a java webapplication that different company-users can login and take out their reports. These company-users will only have accesss to only their own products, and not others.

After logging in, the users will see a dashboard, with charts and table-data. There will also be a combo-bex, will all available reports to user. After choosing the report, the user will need to specify report-parameters (from/to-data and so on...)

When the report is shown in html-format, the user will have opportunity to run these functions:
- Export to pdf
- Export to Excel
- Export to csv
- Print report
- Send report by email to friend (which means sending a link to the report, with the report-parameters already set)
- Save report (which means saing a link to the report, with the report-parameters already set)

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I have 5 weeks to create this java web application and implement these features.

I have figured out that i have these 2 opportunities:

- Create an spring mvc application with birt runtime engine:
Pros:
*whatever functionality i want, as i code everything
*use spring security to implement user authorization/authentication
Cons:
*very time consuming, as i need to code everything from parameter-setting/export-functionality/etc..

- Create and spring mvc application, but use birt report viewer in an iframe
Pros:
*all the birt report viewer functionality is already implemented, ill reach my 5 week-deadline
*i love the slick ajax/export/popup functionality in birt report viewer
Cons:
*cant see how i can implement user authorization/authentication on birt report viewer in the iframe ?
*cant see how i can save the report with report-parameters?
*need to deploy two webapps on the server.

I was also wondering to use the birt report viewer source and build everything in one webapp, but i havent found any good example where someone has done it.

Im What are your thoughts, im thinking about using birt report viewer in an iframe if i can figure out the security problem ?

Thanx everyone1

johnw

If it was me, I'd either use the BIRT Report Engine API to implement the BIRT functionality into my application programatically. It takes a little bit of knowledge in how to implement the BIRT API however.

In your case, due to time constraints and not being familiar with BIRT, I'd recommend just using the BIRT Report Viewer. If you are an Actuate commercial customer, you can use the JSAPI to implement a small report viewer with all the Interactive Viewer features, or you could use BIRT 360 as your dashboard.