BIRT Report Designers

Features: Component-based Model Reuse

BIRT Report Designers support component and design template reuse. Design templates, which contain components, provide starting points for report design. Changes made to components can be automatically propagated to report designs that use them. This isolates complexity so that roles and responsibilities can be distributed based on skill level for efficient development and maintenance, while maintaining design consistency.

Encapsulation

BIRT Report Designers separate presentation, business logic, and data access so that one can be changed without affecting the others and as a result, BIRT reports are easier to change and maintain.

• Presentation Encapsulation - separates report presentation from logic and data access so it can change without affecting the rest of the report.
• Business Logic Encapsulation - separates business logic from presentation and data access for better responsiveness to business changes.
• Data Access Encapsulation - separates data access so changes to data source do not affect presentation and logic.

Style Sheets

Reports designed with the BIRT Report Designers can share design styles and leverage existing CSS style sheets for report consistency.

• Built-in Style Sheets - manages the formatting of multiple-report designs with shared styles.
• CSS Style Sheets- imports and references existing CSS style sheets for use in designs.

Run-time Design Libraries

BIRT Report Designers store report components, elements and designs in libraries that are used when reports are generated so that BIRT reports always use the most current design.

• Component Storage - stores new library components as variations on existing components.
• Report Element Storage - stores styles, data sources, and scripts as report elements in libraries.
• Dynamic Report Design Updates - automatically updates report designs at run time with changes made to components and elements.

Features Overview Next: Easy to Use