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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