If you are interested in an Eclipse Reporting tool that you can deploy to your J2EE application, you should checkout Birt. Birt stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools. This tool can help you create Lists, Charts, Crosstabs, Letters & Documents and Compound Reports. You can install Birt at the eclipse website. You can install the All-in-One to get all of the files you will need to use to create reports with Eclipse.

To create a Project, you can:

select new project->business intelligence and reporting tools->report project

To install the JDBC Drivers:

You will likely want to use your own JDBC driver with BIRT. Use the data source editors JDBC driver management wizard. To start the wizard, select the Data Source Explorer tab, and select right mouse button on the JDBC Data Source and select new. Enter a name for the Data Source. For establishing connection to a SQL database, you can input this information:

Driver Class: net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver
Driver URL: jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://domainname/DatabaseName
and enter the user name and password for the database

Note: if the Driver Class isn’t contained in the drop down list, you need to add it. You should select manage drivers and add the driver information. After you add the jar files, your drivers will appear in the driver tab.

You can select the datasource and select connect to connect to the database.

BIRT is a perspective within Eclipse. To open it, use the Window item on the Eclipse main menu. Choose Open Perspective, then Report Design. If report Design does not appear directly in the Open Perspective window, then choose Other… A list of perspectives will appear, and you should choose report design.

Eclipse will switch to display the BIRT perspective.

On the project, you can select new and select Report to create a report. After naming your report, select next where you can choose a template.
NOTE: You can create a report in three ways: as a blank report, by using a BIRT-defined template, or by copying one of your report designs.

Some of my information was taken from the eclipse tutorial at the eclipse website. You can finish the tutorial there.

I will be posting more information on this tool as I discover issues, or other areas that aren’t covered in the eclipse tutorial.

(Stay Tuned for Part 2)

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Are you interested to win some instant cash and prizes? Why not enter the iLASIK Video Contest? The Abbott Medical Optics Inc. (AMO) wants to get information concerning how laser vision correction has improved people’s lives. You can make a video showing how your improved vision has improved your life and you could win $5,000 which is the grand prize. AMO has recently launched the “You Gotta See This” to get people to share their experiences. You can submit many types of videos such as boxing and swimming videos. The first prize you could win is a HDTV package which is worth $2,500. The second prize you could win is the Flip UltraHD camcorder which is worth $199.99. Some of the categories you could submit your video under is the “My contacts are getting in the way of my good time” and “My favorite sport or activity would be so much cooler with better vision.” If you need help getting votes, I would suggest getting all of your friends and family members to vote for you. So what are you waiting for? If you have received correction vision and are interested in winning some great cash and prizes, you should checkout the iLASIK video contest today.

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If you get this bizarre message in ASP:

Microsoft VBScript runtime error ‘800a0007′
Out of memory

It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are out of memory. I received this error when I was creating an array using a variable. The variable was a negative value and that is why I received this error.

So if you get this error, you might want to check what value you are instantiating your array with.

For instance, if you have a statement like this:

redim testvariable(-6)

You will get an Out Of Memory Error.

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This afternoon in Berlin I gave the Developer General Session (keynote) around Visual Studio 2010.  As part of that keynote we have formally announced the purchase of the Teamprise Client Suite from Teamprise (a division of SourceGear). You can read details on Brian Harry’s blog here.

I’m very excited about bringing Teamprise into the Visual Studio family of products.  Many of you work in heterogeneous environments and having the Teamprise Client Suite means you can collaborate through Team Foundation Server (TFS) even if parts of your team are working with other systems like Eclipse.  I want to welcome the new Teamprise employees who now join our team at Microsoft!

Also at during the keynote I had a chance to bring three of our partners on stage to demo their new products base on Visual Studio 2010:

• Micro Focus demonstrated their new COBOL support in the IDE including using the editor extensions for visually showing code flow, architecture diagram extensions (through DGML) for showing a flowchart of code logic, and new visualization support for seeing a preview of mainframe terminal displays.
• Quest Software demonstrated their Oracle support for the advanced database features (now part of Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate).  With this support you can now import Oracle schema directly into Visual Studio, refactor database schema, and the other pre and post production features.
• PreEmptive Solutions demonstrated their new support for instrumentation of code which can return runtime statics and information about how code is executed in the wild.  New support includes extensions for the architecture diagram (through DGML), a new margin control with preview of runtime data, and an inline WPF based graph system so one can review data directly in their editor next to the code which is impacted.

All of these solutions demonstrate the advanced features we are now starting to see on the core investments made with VS2010 (including the new editor, WPF investments, DGML, and others).

TechEd has been a lot of fun so far.  For those of you here in Berlin, I look forward to seeing you at the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the “fall of the wall” this evening.  Enjoy TechEd!

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Based on my post yesterday on Missed Opportunities, I received a really interesting email. The basic gist of the email could be summarized as:

Don’t we have enough tools for now?

At some level, this seems like a great question. We are already swimming in tools and new tools arrive faster than we can understand them much less try them. It seems somehow reasonable to simply say, let’s stop looking at new tools for a while and just get better with what we already have.

In Work Skills Keeping Up?, I discuss the Tilde Effect. And in some ways, there’s a really good point being made that there is no way we can truly keep up with the flood of tools and solutions. So, we have to make smart choices about how to stay up to speed.

Still I’ll stick with:

The bottom line for the Tilde Effect is that we live in a time of incredible innovation that directly affect the methods we use to work and learn. Our work skills cannot sit still. There’s a lot of discussion about 21st century skills to be taught in schools, but what about the rest of us?

And the focus of that post is really about general metacognitive tools and methods for knowledge workers. If you are talking about tools, methods, analysis, etc. for technologies that impact learning and performance AND you believe you have a responsibility to help with design of appropriate solutions, then I don’t think you can say we have “enough tools for now.”

The better question is “How do you appropriately balance the need to stay up-to-speed with the fact that you cannot possibly spend enough time to truly stay up-to-speed?”

Back to the post from yesterday for more discussion on exactly that.

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eLearning Technology

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I need your help.  I’m supposed to be preparing for a panel session at DevLearn 2009.  But instead, I’m finding myself wondering what I’m going to be discussing with people.

The panel description is:

From Learning to Performance — Using Technology to Make It Happen

Thursday November 12, 2009 01:15 PM

Tridib Roy Chowdhury, Adobe Systems, Inc.

Ruth Clark, Clark Training & Consulting
David Metcalf, University of Central Florida
Lance Dublin, Dublin Consulting
Joe Ganci, Dazzle Technologies Corp.
Tony Karrer, TechEmpower, Inc.

Historically, learning departments across organizations have followed the “shiny penny.”   This high-powered panel will discuss how can one overcome this barrier to learning. You’ll discuss the key trends in technology-enabled learning such as self-service (learning by search, mobility, syndication), collaboration, etc., and learn some frameworks for execution.
In this session, you will learn:

• Why “shiny penny” is not the right approach to organizational learning
• Key trends in technology-enabled learning
• Picking the right learning strategy suited for your organization
• How organizations can adapt a productivity-oriented approach to learning technologies

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced participants should be associated with learning, training, or HR organizations at a strategic level.

Each of the panelists have been asked to prepare to lead small workgroups.  My workgroup will focus on the topic of “missed opportunities.”

So, my first question – what would you expect to discuss around the topic of missed opportunities?

I’m thinking that we are talking about how the ever increasing set of technologies and solutions causes us to have to continually adapt.  As soon as we feel good about our ability to build one kind of solution, we are expected to build the next.  We don’t want to just fall prey to shiny object syndrome, but at the same time, we need to be ready to deliver good solutions using appropriate technologies as they arise.

So, if that’s what I’m supposed to be talking about, then:

How do you avoid missed opportunities?  How do you stay prepared?  How are you ready when the opportunity arises?

Or at least, what might you discuss as part of this working group if you were there?

Please help.

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eLearning Technology

Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

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The best of the rest from the physics arXiv this week

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Electronics that break down in the body could be useful in temporary medical implants and drug delivery.

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Smaller devices can help stroke patients regain function.

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Experts at Defrag believe e-mail can benefit from lessons learned on the social Web.

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