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Birt report with hibernate

Hi I'm trying to find a way to create birt reports with datasets based on a hibernate data source. However, I downloaded eclipse report designer and related plugins, but can't seem to find an option for hibernate data source. Was this functionality taken out?
I have gone through a couple of links and either they are old libraries or the integration is done via seam. The only reasonable examples i found are using Scripted data source to access hibernate POJOs. But nothing on how to access hibernate entities directly from the report at least in the latest versions of birt.
Or is there something that I'm missing?

You can check my approach based on POJO data source (without using scripting data source). I finally found some time today to describe it here.

How to view BIRT reports using Java in Eclipse

I'm creating an appointment booking and financial application for a start-up business opening soon. Everything is going well and I'm nearing the end of this project, yet I would like to create reports that the user can run, print and export. I have added the BIRT developer into Eclipse and have successfully created several reports which preview well. What I would like to know is how I can get the reports to run from Java code? I have searched the web for ages and have not found a solution. The reports are sitting in the same project folder as all my classes.
Your help is most appreciated..
Thanks

If your application is a web application you can use BIRT engine inside your WAR and create all your reports and charts, and then share them using the application server.
Otherwise, if your application is an Eclipse based application, I think you should use the BIRT eclipse plugin, that contains the engine, to build reports and then you can use the default eclipse file association to show them to users (ie using internal browser).

I believe the most common way of sharing BIRT reports is to use Apache Tomcat. This tool allows the report to be run as HTML, PDF, Excel 2003, and a number of other formats. As both BIRT and Apache Tomcat are open source, initiation is not as simple as more costly products but there are a number of solutions on the web for any problem you might encounter.
http://tomcat.apache.org/

Configuring & Generating BIRT Reports Dynamically

From watching the 2-part YouTube videos and perusing the BIRT manual, my understanding of it is the the worflow goes something like this:
Create a new Report in Eclipse
Use the BIRT Report Designer (Eclipse plug-in) to design a report
Populate the report with Data Sources (JDBC drivers & databases) and Data Sets (specific tables)
Generate/export/print the report
As cool as this tool seems to be, I cannot find any documentation that leads me to believe that this is a Java tool and not an Eclipse-only tool (meaning, it has a Java API and can interact with Java apps, as opposed to a pure Eclipe plug-in which requires manual/human interaction from the Eclipse IDE.
Specifically, I want to confirm that BIRT either can or cannot do the following:
Configure a report (layout, UI widget placement, data sources/sets, etc.) programmatically; i.e. in the same way that JasperReport API has the iReport designer that generates JRXML, is the same true for BIRT?
Kick off a report "generation" through a Java API whereby data gets read-in realtime and populates the report and the report can be sent out or stored on a file system
Create HTML and PDF versions of the same report

Answers to your questions:
Yes. BIRT may not be as powerful as JasperReports, but it can achieve most of the common needs.
BIRT designer generates a .rptdesign file similar to JRXML in JasperReports.
About your question: almost everything is possible to achieve programmatically in BIRT. BIRT Report Engine APIs is the best source for you to get started with all the functionalities you have mentioned. It has good examples given for every functionality.
Not sure. BIRT usually fetches pre-saved data from DB and generates the report. You could though see the real time data representation (in the form of a flash chart may be) with the help of some external libraries (See if this thread and this example helps). But I am not aware of a direct way of converting the real time data to PDF/HTML report. You will have to find some hack(s).
Yes of course. Refer the APIs. To be specific, irendertask.
Sources to get more information/answers:
There are several example reports given on the website. A quick glance through them might give you more insights.
For discussions and troubleshooting, refer eclipse community forum and BIRTExchange (heavily used by BIRT users).
BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting is an excellent book. I've used it myself from time to time.

I can confirm that the two BIRT components you are interested in using (BIRT Design Engine and Report Engine) will work in a pure-Java context and are deployable without Eclipse. I have deployed BIRT reports to run out of standalone Tomcat servers as well as Pentaho BI Server, and have exercised report definitions at the command line using shell scripts (no Eclipse involved).
Answers to your questions:
Configure a report programmatically: use the Design Engine API. I am not familiar with the Jasper Reports API so cannot comment on whether the BIRT method is similar, but the example code provides a good illustration. In particular, note lines 120-133 which add and manipulate widgets in the report, and how line 136 calls saveAs to save the report design file.
Generate a report in realtime: use the Report Engine. The sample code for the IRunAndRenderTask may be the most useful for you at first, but the engine has the ability to separate the data processing (extract and aggregate) of the report from the rendering and paging. I believe the examples focus on running reports from a Servlet, but it is easy to extract that logic from the servlet container logic.
Create both HTML and PDF versions: easily handled in the Report Engine via the IRenderTask. Once you've been through all the other setup work, changing the output format to produce PDF vs HTML is something of a joy. In my experience, it just works.
I found it useful to start out with a very simple Java class (adapted from the very old code here) to run a test report, called from the command line.

you can use the report engine API to configure reports:
http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/deploy/reportEngineAPI.php#ireportrunnable
You can create HTML or PDF versions of a report by setting a variable in the url to generate the report or if using the report engine programmatically:
http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/deploy/reportEngineAPI.php#irendertask
We use Eclipse to build and design reports. The report engine is deployed as part of a reports_war, the war has its own connection to the database. Our Java based web application uses urls to interact with the report templates (variables are set in the urls).
The BIRT Exchange is a good place for more information

There is not much difference between Birt and jasper as designing point of view except birt have eclipse plugin.
1)yes,you can configure it by java program or methods.
2)yes,this is possible.
3)yes again for export your report in different formats is easy for birt report by java

BIRT is a good and easy tool fro report generating.
you can design your pages in BIRT.
-
Create datasets and can pass the values from your web pages to your BIRT design using jsp tag lib.
BIRT fulfills all your requirement. Its so easy to use. first i use jasper, then tried crystal atlast Birt gies the output.
tag lib
i refer this link to view BIRTVIEWVER in my web page. PDF creation is so perfect in BIRT. You can generate PDF, DOC, HTML also.
you can pass values to your birt . while creating dataset there is option for passing params.
to do all this you have to install BIRTREPORT inyour eclipse BIRT Report designer

How do I combine multiple BIRT reports

We currently have a whole suite of report designs that cover various parts of our app, and these reports are generated on demand by our users.
I want to be able to bundle up several of these reports into a single report to return to the user.
I initially hacked up a custom report builder that generated report design files using segments inside a report library file, and then ran that generated design, but this was unwieldy and a pain to manage as I had to duplicate the individual reports (still required) inside the report library file. Any changes to the stand-alone reports had to be duplicated in the library for the combined reports.
What I am really looking for is a way to specify several design files, have them all run, and then return a single file to the user, containing all the reports they selected.

This is a fairly common request, that we are working on but have not solved yet.
One approach that is not ideal that you can use today is to run each report and then combine the output from each rptdocument. BIRT-exchange has an example of this here for PDF and HTML. The problem is that the page numbering will not be correct and the TOC will not be right either.
The better approach is if there was a merge report engine task that would allow you to combine multiple rptdocuments into a single rptdocument with appropriate pagination and TOC. There is a bugzilla entry here that I hope to see in the 2.5 (June 2009) version of the product. If you are interested please have a look in and give your feedback.
Finally, one of the features that I would like to see in the product for 2009 is some refinement to the DesignEngine API that allows a developer to easily compose a single report design at runtime, using components from other report designs. I have created a bugzilla to track this too.
If none of these seem appropriate let me know and I will see if I can help you find a different solution.

Create PDFs from multipage forms in WebObjects

I would like to automatically generate PDF documents from WebObjects based on mulitpage forms. Assuming I have a class which can assemble the related forms (java/wod files) is there a good way to then parse the individual forms into a PDF instead of going to the screen?

The canonical response when asked about PDFs from WebObjects has generally been ReportMill. It's a PDF document generating framework that works a lot like WebObjects, and includes its own graphical PDF builder tool similar to WebObjects Builder and Interface Builder. You can bind elements in your generated PDFs to dynamic data in your application just as you would for a WOComponent.
They have couple of tutorial videos on the ReportMill product page that should give you an idea of how the tool works. It'll probably be a lot easier than trying to work with FOP programmatically.

I'm not familiar with WebObjects, but I see you have java listed in there.
iText is a java api for building pdfs. If you can access a java api from WebObjects you should be able to build pdfs that way.

ERPDFWrapper component in Project Wonder: Site link

ScArcher2>>
I have looked into different routes for creating PDFs on the fly including FOP and a few Java libraries. I think what I am really asking is if anyone has already done this in the WebObjects framework. My hope is that someone familiar with WebObjects might have done this already and have some insight that would save me some time.

You can use ReportMill or Jasper Reports. Compared with ReportMill Jasper Reports is Free but requires learning huge library. You can use IReport or Jasper Assistant eclipse plugin(If you are using WOLips) for building report templates. My experiance both are good.

Jasper Reports support have been added to Project Wonder a week ago :
Site Link Video
A talk about that new framework was done at WOWODC 2010, and it was recorded. Check wocommunity.org and the mailing list about that in October.