Implementing advanced charts with Birt: creating professionally-looking reports with the eclipse based Birt

Before you start

About this tutorial

BIRT provides a chart engine that enables us to display datasets as charts. You can further configure the diagram to support interactivity, so that when the user performs an action on a chart element (such as a chart title, legend, axis, value series, and so on), the chart responds with a variety of responses, such as displaying ToolTips, pop-up messages, or skipping to another report. BIRT can display charts in the following format: PNG, JPG, BMP, or SVG. SVG is an XML specification that describes 2-d vector graphics and scripting programming, so you can implement a variety of interactive features:

Drillthrough allows the user to move from one report to another by clicking a chart element such as a row, node, and so on. This allows the two reports to be linked through a selected element. Highlight users can select an element by selecting a legend or by resting the mouse over the legend. This makes it easy to find a series of data in the chart. Visibility toggle users can hide or display a range of data by selecting a legend. With many elements in a chart, users can quickly identify elements by selecting a legend. It also helps users focus on the specified series. Display ToolTip when the user hovers over an element, a message is displayed that provides the custom message associated with the element. Custom user interaction

For many enterprise systems, accessibility and internationalization are important issues when developing reports. BIRT provides the ability to add accessibility and internationalization support to reports.

BIRT Designer provides a sample database that contains business data for a retailer. We will use a subset of this database to create a set of sales reports to demonstrate the features mentioned above.

The annual total sales report contains a bar chart showing annual sales figures by product. The user clicks a bar to drill through to the second report, which shows the sales trend of the product. The Product Sales Trend report contains a line chart that shows the sales data that the product has changed over time. When the user moves the mouse over the node on the line, a tooltip appears showing the sales volume. Users can also drill through to a third report by clicking a line. The product's consumer distribution report contains two diagrams: a pie chart showing the overall distribution of the consumers who purchased the product, the corresponding pie section is highlighted when the user moves the mouse over the legend, and an area chart showing the amount of consumer purchases over time, which the user can display and hide by clicking the corresponding legend. Users can also click on a pie chart section, which will pop up a message showing the amount of the consumer's purchase.

This tutorial explains how to create a report by following these steps:

Get ready

Create a BIRT Project

Create a common report template

Create a new report

Create a report layout

Creating labels

Create a data source

Create three copies for three reports