Developers : BIRT quick start

Compatibility : BIRT 4.4.2

This document introduces the best practices in the development of BIRT reports.

This documentation addresses technical profiles that will have to develop reports with BIRT and Centreon MBI. Knowledge on SQL language is required.

In this guide, you will find:

• The main concepts of BIRT

• The different steps of a BIRT report project

This documentation does not describe the reuse of Centreon MBI development libraries.

BIRT is a report design tool. It allows to:

• Connect to data sources

• Extract relevant data for your report

• Layout and format the report

BIRT objective is to visualize your business data in tabular or graphical statistics. Even if BIRT allows you to connect different data sources in the same report, its use is not suitable for heavy calculations or aggregations that should be performed by an ETL (Extract Transform Load).

This documentation will only approach the report design (blue zone in the diagram above).

Contents:

• BIRT Concepts
  • Data sources
  • Data sets
  • Data binding
  • Report parameters
  • Layout the report
  • BIRT Libraries
  • BIRT Templates
• Setting the development environnement
  • Create the workspace
  • Create a new project
  • Connection to the databases
  • Generate a standard report
• Develop your own reports
  • Use Centreon report template
  • Define the project structure
  • Reports (RPTDESIGN)
  • Resources
  • Libraries
• Deploy a report on Centreon MBI
  • Create the XML file which describes the needed parameters
  • Deploy the report