Installing BIRT
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BIRT, which stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, is an Eclipse-based open-source reporting system for Java and J2EE-based web applications. BIRT is a powerful application to meet your reporting needs, but the first step is to get BIRT and install it. This can be a bit daunting, as BIRT comes in so many different flavors.
In this tutorial, we will discuss the various methods of downloading BIRT and installing it. Once completed you will know:
- Where to go for BIRT
- How to install the standalone BIRT Report Designer
- How to install the BIRT Eclipse Plug-in through the Eclipse update manager
- How to install the BIRT Eclipse Plug-in manually
- How to build BIRT from source
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[edit] Requirements
BIRT has a fairly small set of requirements to run, depending on your use. There are no Operating System requirements to run BIRT, as it is a Java application and should run on any platform that Java will run on. For the BIRT Report Designer, any platform that will run Eclipse will work. Personally I have successfully run and developed reports under Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. A fair word of warning to the Mac folks: you are probably better off running under Parallels due to Eclipse's poor performance under native OSX.
As far as hardware requirements are concerned, I would recommend at least a Pentium 3 processor with at least 512 MB of RAM for the BIRT Report Designer. The standalone Report Engine has much less stringent requirements, as it does not run a full-blown instance of Eclipse. I would say 256 MB of RAM would be sufficient, depending on the requirements of the application it is being embedded into.
[edit] Where Do I Get BIRT?
First, you want to download BIRT. The typical location for everything that is related to BIRT is going to be the Eclipse website, at http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix. This will bring you to the BIRT homepage. Here, you can get the latest news on BIRT, including status of upcoming releases, news on books, conferences, and access to the BIRT newsgroups where you can ask questions about BIRT. The newsgroups are an excellent resource for BIRT questions, as they are frequented by the BIRT developers and BIRT Project Management Committee members.
The homepage is also where you can get the various BIRT distributions, such as the All-In-One Eclipse package (which is Eclipse pre-packaged and configured with BIRT), the BIRT Standalone Report Designer, and information about retrieving and building BIRT from source.
For the following installations, we will use the BIRT 2.2 release. There are several installation paths to choose from. The one I highly recommend to people is the BIRT All-In-One package. You can also install BIRT as a plug-in to go into an already existing Eclipse installation, or you can retrieve the BIRT Standalone RCP package. I will go into depth about each one of these packages, and the benefits of and reasons to use each in the following sections.
[edit] Installing BIRT from the All-in-One Installation
The BIRT All-in-One package is the easiest one to install for BIRT, so it will be the first one I demonstrate. The BIRT All-in-One package is a BIRT distribution that contains a full Eclipse installation, pre-configured with BIRT. I usually use this as the base installation for Eclipse, and add plug-ins accordingly. BIRT can have some tricky issues with configuration that I have come across in the past, and since then, I avoid these by installing the All-In-One package.
As with most BIRT installations, the All-in-One package is available from the Download BIRT link, as shown previously. This will typically take you to the current and stable release of BIRT. The developers seem to agree that the All-in-One package is the typical way to go, as it is the first link on the page. Following is the screenshot of what the BIRT download page looks like:
Additionally, older and pre-release versions of BIRT are available from the More Downloads section of the BIRT Download Page. From this link, you can retrieve older releases, current milestone builds, and the latest nightly release for those who want to stay on the cutting edge.
Shown in the previous screenshot is the full download page for BIRT 2.2.1.1. From here, I can retrieve the various installation packages, such as the RCP Standalone Report Designer, the BIRT Source Code, and various other runtime libraries and demo databases. As I am installing the All-in-One package, I downloaded the release for Windows.
The BIRT All-in-One installation package is a large ZIP file (roughly 240 Mb); so for individuals who already have an Eclipse installation and are limited by a small amount of bandwidth, this may not be an attractive option. But for individuals with access to high-speed Internet or not having an existing Eclipse installation, this works out fine. This ZIP file contains a full Eclipse installation, with the BIRT plug-ins already installed and pre-configured for use.
Installation of the BIRT All-in-One package is as simple as opening the ZIP file in an archiving utility such as WinZip and extracting the contents to an installation directory of your choice. I typically use C:\Eclipse as my base installation directory.
[edit] Installing BIRT All-In-One under Linux
In Linux, installation is very similar. The archive file containing the All-in-One package is a standard Linux tarball file. One recommendation for the Linux installers: I recommend using Sun's Java instead of the GNU Java. The GNU Java is compliant to an older specification of Java than BIRT requires, and some features will not work correctly under Linux. Installing Sun Java under Linux can vary, based on the distribution of Linux you use and the distributor's views of the Sun license on Java. I have chronicled my experiences getting Sun Java to work under Ubuntu Linux, a free desktop-oriented distribution of Linux based on Debian, as well as CentOS, a free alternative to Red Hat's Enterprise Linux, on my blog (http://digiassn.blogspot.com/). For your distribution, see the appropriate documentation on getting Sun Java installed, and getting it to execute as the default Java Runtime.
Also, based on the version of BIRT you run, you will need one of the two different Java versions. For BIRT versions prior to 2.2, you will need Java 1.4; for 2.2 and later, you will need Java 1.5. This is the same for Windows or any UNIX-like Operating System.
Once installed, extract the BIRT All-in-One archive to your target location. This will vary based on the philosophy of file management and purpose of the system in question. For example, on a multi-user desktop system, you may choose to extract this archive to the /home/yourUserName folder to allow only yourself access to BIRT.
If you are setting this up on a single-user desktop, or for multiple users, you may set this up under /, /usr, /usr/local folder, or some other dedicated folder location.
[edit] Installing iText for PDF Support
One optional element that needs to be downloaded is iText. iText is a Java library written by Bruno Lowagie and Paulo Soares, which allows Java programs to output in the Adobe PDF format. Without iText, reports cannot be exported to PDF. iText is available from Bruno Lowagie's website at http://www.lowagie.com/iText/.
iText is the cause of one of the most commonly occurring issues with BIRT. As of the time of this writing, iText is not distributed with BIRT at the request of Eclipse itself, due to the fact that it has not completed its intellectual property verification. While using iText is perfectly legal, and the maintainer has given full permission for use of iText in BIRT, the legal folks at Eclipse are just being safe. As a result, installation of iText is a manual procedure. Fortunately, it is a very easy installation process.
For versions of BIRT prior to 2.2, use iText version 1.3.2.2; for later versions, use iText 1.46. Installation for all versions remains the same. Installation of iText under the BIRT Report designer is as simple as copying the iText.jar file to the appropriate location. This is located under the eclipse\plugins\com.lowagie.itext_<version> folder.
Once it is copied to this location, you will be able to export report designs as PDF documents. Instructions for installing iText to the J2EE web viewer are a little different, and will be covered in Tutorial 11 under the section about the Web Viewer Installation.
[edit] Installation of BIRT through the Eclipse Plug-in Update Program
The next section covers how to install BIRT using the Eclipse plug-in manager. Let's say that you already have an Eclipse instance that you use regularly. As Eclipse can typically be a rather large package, installing a separate instance may not be feasible due to disk space constraints, policy, or some other limiting factor. In cases such as these, it is more appropriate to add on to your existing Eclipse installation.
Keep in mind that if you take it upon yourself to install BIRT as a plug-in, you must also install all the prerequisite plug-ins that the BIRT designer is built on top of. This part is what makes the All-in-One installation method preferable to the manual installation of plug-ins. Another reason is that this is the avenue in which I have traditionally encountered most installation problems, such as dependency problems.
In order to proceed, you must first make sure that the following dependency packages are installed with BIRT:
| BIRT 2.2 | BIRT 2.1 |
|---|---|
| Eclipse 3.3 | Eclipse 3.2 |
| Graphical Editor Framework 3.3 | Graphical Editor Framework 3.2 |
| Eclipse Modeling Framework 2.3 | Eclipse Modeling Framework 2.2 |
| Java Runtime Environment 1.5 | Java Runtime Environment 1.4.2 |
| Data Tools Project 1.5 |
These requirements can be installed separately alongside your BIRT plug-in installation, given that you include the appropriate repositories. Plug-in installation is done through the Eclipse Software Update menu, located under the Help toolbar menu, under Software Updates.
Once in the software update tool, there are two options you can select: You have the option of searching for updates, or to install new features. If you do not already have BIRT installed, you should choose Install New Features. Otherwise, you can get updates for your existing BIRT installation by choosing Search for updates.
If you choose to update existing software, the software update tool will prompt you to verify your repositories or mirror sites to check for updates. If you chose to install new updates, you will have to complete an extra step in choosing the list of repositories to search for new software. Because BIRT has been a member of the Eclipse consortium since 2004, the BIRT project is listed under the sites to include in your search. You will not need to add BIRT as a new repository to search under. This makes things much easier.
However, as BIRT is collaborating with a number of other Eclipse projects in order to leverage their tools such as the Web Tools Project for site deployment and the Data Tools Project for a future revision of the query editor inside of BIRT you will need to include other repositories as well in your update search path.
I recommend at least all of the sites listed in the following screenshot:
Now, with the correct repositories selected, you can click Finish. A list of mirrors will be shown for each repository given. I will typically use the default or first on the list, but this is up to the user. A rule of thumb is to choose a location close to you.
Once you have chosen all of your sites, you will be brought to the package selection screen. Here you can choose which packages to install. BIRT, of course, and all BIRT packages should be chosen.
Sometimes, you will get a notice that a required package has not been chosen. This can be due to various versions in the selected repositories, or because a particular package is not in the chosen repositories, in which case, you will need to add a new repository to your list. Sometimes you can just click on the Select Required Packages button, and the necessary packages will be selected from the chosen repositories. This delicate balance of choosing the correct packages, required dependency packages, and repositories is the reason I usually recommend that people use the All-in-One installation method.
Now, with your packages selected, you can click on Next. The packages will then be downloaded from the selected repositories. Once finished downloading, a prompt will come up to install the packages you selected. You can either confirm each package individually, or just select Install All. Once completed, you will be asked to restart Eclipse. At this point, you can follow the steps to install iText given earlier, and your BIRT installation will be complete.
[edit] Additional References
For instructions on Creating Themes for BIRT, click here
[edit] Source
The source of this content is Chapter 2: Installing BIRT of Practical Data Analysis and Reporting with BIRT by John Ward (Packt Publishing, 2008).
