Hibernate and BIRT

gromw · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:14 am **Posts:** 8

Hi,

I wrote an article on Hibernate and BIRT using BIRT's Scripted Data Source. It is posted at
[url]
http://www.techforge.com/index.php/articles/192
[/url]
Please forgive the spam.

I am in the process of writting another article on BIRT's ODA technology to consume Hibernate Objects and would love to know what Hibernate Developers would like to see in an ODA.

The ODA technology allows me to build a GUI to plug into BIRT, but what I am having trouble with is what would a Report Developer want to see on the GUIs. Ultimately the end result from an ODA is a rowset.

Any Help is appreciated.

max · **Posted:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:36 am

ODA ?

is that the upcoming query api in RDB or ?

anyway, keep me posted and we can talk about some of this stuff inclusion in the hibernate tools if you want (and it makes sense ;)

gromw · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:14 am **Posts:** 8

Max,

ODA is Open Data Access. It is framework that BIRT uses to build Data Source Drivers. I have a simple one built now that list all the mapped objects and you can select one and get a rowset back. I dont think that is very useful, considering you might want joins etc.

It would be nice to have access to the query console and use it as the GUI portion of the ODA.

max · **Posted:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 12:58 pm

yes i would think that lots of the stuff we have in hibernate console would make sense to use in this.

Maybe it would possible to just use the code we have to manage all the hibernate libraries so users dont need to set it up differently etc.

i'll try and find time to read your article and see if i understand what it needs.

gromw · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:14 am **Posts:** 8

Max,

The article I wrote used a Scripted Datasource, which is non GUI.
ODA is a way of building a data driver for BIRT. I have used the Hibernate Tools and when I build some HQL and preveiw the results, this really the same process that BIRT uses with standard JDBC queries. It would be nice if I could plug in those pieces and use the rowset comming back from the preview.

Does this make sense?

Thanks

gromw · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:14 am **Posts:** 8

Max,

The article I wrote used a Scripted Datasource, which is non GUI.
ODA is a way of building a data driver for BIRT. I have used the Hibernate Tools and when I build some HQL and preveiw the results, this really the same process that BIRT uses with standard JDBC queries. It would be nice if I could plug in those pieces and use the rowset comming back from the preview.

Does this make sense?

Thanks

max · **Posted:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 4:30 pm

sure - in the console today you can listen for when new output becomes available.

The output will simply be a collection.

gromw · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:14 am **Posts:** 8

Max,
Is there anyway to launch the Query Console on a Dialog?
Jason

max · **Posted:** Thu Nov 03, 2005 3:39 pm

Its an editor - so if you can figure out how to instantiate an editor and put it in a dialog it should be possible.

you could probably also make a simple incaranation of it that uses the sourceviewerconfigration etc.

gromw · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:14 am **Posts:** 8

Thankyou

chane · **Joined:** Tue Sep 09, 2003 9:11 pm **Posts:** 32

Jason,

Any update on the ODA in BIRT for using Hibernate Objects / meta data?

I know being able to use Hibernate as a datasource for BIRT would let me make the decision to move from JasperReports (which we wrote custom data sources for). I've been following the BIRT development and like what I see in the coming 2.0 release.

Thanks in advance,
Chris....

gromw · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:14 am **Posts:** 8

chane,

I wrote a very simple ODA to Hibernate, but I didnt get in the HQL editor.
The one I wrote was really just for example purposes. I havent had much time to look more into this, but after the holidays I will probably try again.

BTW have you looked at the Scripted Data Source?

Jason

chane · **Joined:** Tue Sep 09, 2003 9:11 pm **Posts:** 32

Jason - thanks for letting me know. BTW, I appreciate the work you have done on BIRT.

I did look briefly at the Scripted Data Source (and more importantly bookmarked it). My impression was there was a lot of glue code written to get it to work with a report. I admit though I have not look close enough to know if that glue code is created once and then reusuable across all reports or if each report must have the glue code embedded.

Anyway, I fully admit to not having studied BIRT in depth yet. I plan to revisit my reporting solution once BIRT has the next release.

When I start evaulating BIRT, one of the things I am going to be looking at is how I can make the report creation more user friendly for my end users. I don't really want them entering code like:

Code:

if(iterator.hasNext() == false ){
    return false;
 }

 var customer = iterator.next( );

 row["CUSTOMERNUMBER"] = customer.getCustomerNumber();
 row["COUNTRY"] = customer.getCountry();
 row["CONTACTLASTNAME"] = customer.getContactLastName();
 row["CONTACTFIRSTNAME"] = customer.getContactFirstName();
 row["PHONE"] = customer.getPhone();
 row["SALESREPEMPLOYEENUMBER"] = customer.getSalesRepEmployeeNumber();
 row["CUSTOMERNAME"] = customer.getCustomerName();

 return true;

I was hoping by moving to BIRT, the gui designer would help my end users a bit. I was hoping that an ODA would help by being able to read the hibernate meta data (xml or annotations or maybe interact with the Hibernate meta data classes) in order to provide tables(classes) and column names in the report designer.

Thanks for letting me have an update.

Chris....

gromw · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:14 am **Posts:** 8

Chris,

The sample ODA I build did a little of that, but still needs some work.
One item that may interest you is that any of the glue code can be placed in a Library and then anyone can use it graphically (Drag and Drop). This functionallity was released with M3. You can also build templates that have all the data source stuff prebuilt. If you send me an email at jasonweathersby@alltel.net I can send you some of what I have done with the Hiberante ODA.

BIRT 2.0 features are shapping up nicely. Hope you will take a look.

Thanks

Jason