BIRT Tip: Dependent Parameters in your reports

In BIRT, using report parameters is the highly powerful (and easy!) way to customize the report according to the end user needs. Report parameters provides runtime values such as start and end dates for reports, specific item for which report needs to be run, etc based on the user input. While this is very useful, some of the reports may need multiple parameters that have dependent relationship among them. For example, if your report needs to list Customers in a specific state in a specific country, the "regular" report parameter will not meet your requirements because you will need to "dynamically" adjust the list of states available for selection based on the Country that the user chooses. How can you do this in BIRT? Read on.

In BIRT, you will need to use the "Cascading Parameters" to define the relationship between the parameters. Continuing the above example, let us take the CUSTOMERS table in BIRT CLASSICMODELS sample database.

1. Create a new dataset called COUNTRIES to select all unique Country information. e.g. A sample SQL is "SELECT distinct COUNTRY from CUSTOMERS".


2. Create a new dataset called StatesInCountry to select all unique State information for a given country. e.g. A Sample SQL is "SELECT distinct STATE from CUSTOMERS WHERE COUNTRY = ?". Leave the parameter binding for the first parameter (param_1) to NONE for now. We will change it later.


3. Create a new Cascading Parameter Group called "paramStates". Choose "Multiple Dataset" option as we will have to select information from two datasets created above.


4. Click on Add Button on the "New Cascading Parameter" dialog to add a new Cascading parameter. Enter the name for the cascading parameter as "paramCountries", choose COUNTIRES dataset created in Step1 as the dataset and select the "COUNTRY" fields for value and display text.


5. Click on Add button again to add the state cascading parameter. Enter the name for the cascading parameter as "paramStatesInCountry", choose the StatesInCountry dataset created in Step 2 as the dataset and select the "STATE" field for value and display text.


6. Click Ok to close "New Cascading Parameter" dialog. Please see the attached screenshot containing the Cascading Parameter Group information.
   
   


7. Now edit the StatesInCountry dataset created in step 2, goto Parameters section, edit the param_1 parameter binding and set the LinkedToReport Parameter value to the "paramCountries" cascading parameter created in step 4. Click ok to save the changes.

Now your reports are ready to use the cascading paramters. If you run the report now, whenever you change the COUNTRY in the parameter selection, the available STATE selection also changes accordingly. The attached screenshots show the State information for USA and Australia.

PS: It is easier to do these things in BIRT than telling how to do them. I have tried my best to describe the steps involved. If you have questions or need clarifications on the above steps, please feel free to write to me.

5 Things You Didn't Know About Java series from Developerworks

This is part 2, on Performance Monitoring. It's dealing with newer releases, so it won't be directly applicable to all environments, but I think it's very useful information:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-5things8.html?ca=drs-

Video demos of Tivoli products

This is a really informative wiki:


http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/tivolimediagallery/Home

Create a virtual data center with POWER7 and IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager

 

 

Sent to you by Frank Tate via Google Reader:

 

 

Create a virtual data center with POWER7 and IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager

via IBM developerWorks : Tivoli on 6/28/10

Have you ever wondered how to bundle together data center resources? Do you ever have to manually deploy and configure your servers, operating systems, middleware, applications, storage and networking devices? They can be managed as a single entity using physical and virtual IBM servers. In this article, you will learn what a virtual data center is, how to create one using POWER7 VMControl and IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager, and how to use a virtual data center to manage your IT systems and virtualization technologies as a single point of control access. In the process, we'll show you an example of how you can use the Tivoli product for patch management, which is one of the most difficult tasks to manage in a large server farm.

 

 

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• Subscribe to IBM developerWorks : Tivoli using Google Reader
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5 things you didn't know about ... Java performance monitoring, Part 1

 

 

Sent to you by Frank Tate via Google Reader:

 

 

5 things you didn't know about ... Java performance monitoring, Part 1

via IBM developerWorks : Java technology on 6/28/10

Blaming bad code (or bad code monkeys) won't help you find performance bottlenecks and improve the speed of your Java applications, and neither will guessing. Ted Neward directs your attention to tools for Java performance monitoring, starting with five tips for using Java 5's built-in profiler, JConsole, to collect and analyze performance data.

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to IBM developerWorks : Java technology using Google Reader
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HTML 5 TEP Interface

I think this where i will focus any free time. This should allow for mobile browsers to render the interface and be a lot quicker.

Never watch 8 episodes of the Sopranos

This is not technical, just a word of advice. I watched 8 episodes of the Sopranos on DVD back to back. I started swearing at truly inapprpriate moments. Probably good to throw a Brady Bunch episode in the mix.