BIRT Report Designers

Features: Easy to Use

BIRT Report Designers offer a familiar visual design paradigm with task-specific editors, builders and helpers such as wizards and cheat sheets that make it easy for developers of all skill levels to create reusable templates and reports.

Familiar Visual Design Paradigm

BIRT Report Designers use the design paradigm of familiar development tools such as the Eclipse development environment, Web-page designers, and desktop publishing products for easy report development.

• Eclipse-based UI - inherits the look, feel and behavior of the Eclipse IDE.
• Web-page Design Metaphor - employs tables, grids and cells.
• Desktop Publishing Design Metaphor - employs master page definition for page size, margins, headers, footers and backgrounds that apply to every page.
• Drag and Drop - employs Windows paradigm to pull elements and components into a report design.

Design Helpers

BIRT Report Designers provide a variety of tools to help the designer know what has been completed, what task to perform next, and what is available for use in a report design.

• Cheat Sheets - provide step by step instructions by which a task is accomplished such as building a report or navigating a design.
• Outline View - provides a tree view of your entire report structure.
• Layout View - displays a report graphically, laying out various report elements from which a developer can quickly design a report using point and click, and drag and drop.
• Design Palette - shows all visual components available for use.
• Library Explorer - lists libraries and their items available for use.
• Report Preview - previews the report as it is built.

Task-Specific Editors

Editors are included in the BIRT Report Designers for the developer to change report element properties and write JavaScript.

• Property Editor - modifies the collection of commonly modified attributes of various report elements; for example, names, styles, and borders.
• Script Editor - allows the report developer to tailor a report using JavaScript, using standard Eclipse features for editing: for example, syntax coloring and auto-complete.

Task-Specific Builders

BIRT Report Designers provide helpful Builders for the specific tasks of building charts, expressions, cubes and aggregations.

• Chart Builder - constructs a chart.
• Expression Builder - develops queries specifying filters, joins, and aggregations.
• Crosstab Cube Builder - builds a cube that underlies a crosstab report.
• Aggregation Builders - creates a collection of data.

Ease of Use

Actuate BIRT Report Designer Professional,
Eclipse All-in-One Report Designer

Actuate BIRT Designer Pro and Eclipse All-in-One Report Designer contain additional valuable features for technical developers.

• Java Debugger - identifies and corrects java-based script errors.
• Eclipse Project Management features- organizes related reports, source management via CVS .
• Eclipse-based UI - accesses Perspectives, Project Workspaces, and other development tools.

Ease of Use

Actuate BIRT Report Designer,
Actuate BIRT Report Designer Professional

Actuate BIRT Report Designers offer easy installation, additional documentation and iServer Express and iServer Enterprise access.

• Convenient Installer - installs with one click.
• BIRT Books - provide additional information to the developer.
• iServer Access - accesses designs and components stored on a centralized iServer with one click.
• Publish to iServer - publishes designs to iServer with one click.

Features Overview Next: Programmability