BIRT 2.3 Frequently Asked Questions - DRAFT AS OF 6/24/08

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What are some of the new features of BIRT 2.3?

GUI SQL Query Builder Prototype – Feature includes a graphical query building area so someone can create queries to a database without having to understand SQL. User can select columns, join tables together, perform grouping and sorting, etc.

Javascript Debugger – BIRT 2.3 now includes the ability to debug your custom scripts written against the BIRT event model. You can now assign breakpoints and step through your BIRT scripts the same way you would debug your typical Java code.

Scriptable Crosstabs – The crosstab control now has scriptable events that fire during runtime. You can use this to create a custom crosstab look based on data like highlighting certain values, etc.

Copy and Paste formatting – BIRT has already had the ability to have reusable styles, however, if you have applied various formatting manually to a report element and have decided to apply that same formatting to many more elements, you can now copy the formatting and paste it onto as many elements as you like.

Charts can use Data Cubes – With BIRT 2.2 and higher, you can create Data Cubes that help you group and present data into a crosstab, however, if you wanted to chart that data you had to do the grouping again in the chart wizard. With BIRT 2.3, you can now use the Data Cubes directly with the Chart.

Charts in Crosstab cells – Now that BIRT Charts can consume Data Cubes, it only makes sense that we can also add these charts directly to a measure cell within a crosstab.

Mutli-View items – You can now create a table that can be represented as a chart and visa-versa.

Rectangle Select – Prior to BIRT 2.3, you had to hold down CTRL and individually select controls when you wanted to select multiple. Now, you can drag a rectangle around multiple controls to select an entire group of controls.

More details and screenshots can be found at the BIRT 2.3 New and Notable on eclipse.org.

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Will the reports I created in BIRT 2.2 work in BIRT 2.3?

Yes, BIRT 2.3 is backwards compatible to support your BIRT 2.2 reports.

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What version of Actuate software supports BIRT 2.3?

The Actuate 10 product line will support BIRT 2.3. If you are already using BIRT 2.3 you can download Beta versions of Actuate 10 from here

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How do I tell a BIRT table that my data is already sorted and there is no need to sort it again when adding a group section?

In the table element, advance property, there is a property “sortByGroups”, the default value is true, which means BIRT should sort the result set for grouping. If the user set it to FALSE, BIRT will group the resultset without sorting before. 

<property name="sortByGroups">false</property>
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How do I add a chart inside my crosstab control?

With BIRT 2.3, crosstab measures or totals can now be represented as a chart. To see a chart instead of text, create your crosstab in the normal way by creating a Data Cube of dimensions and measures, and then dragging those data cube elements onto the crosstab control.

To replace the measure with a chart, left click on the measure and select "Show as... Chart" from the menu. A default chart with the correct data values defined will be created that you can then modify.

To replace a total with a chart, left click on one of the dimensions and select "Totals" from the menu. Make sure the total you want displayed is checked and then replace "Keep Current View" with "Show as Chart".

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How has PDF output improved in the new version?

The PDF emitter algorithm has been improved and results in a smaller PDF file size.

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What improvements are available in the BIRT 2.3 Web Viewer?

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