DME integrates with a third-party, open source project called BIRT ("Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools"). With BIRT, it is possible to develop and run custom reports on the DME database.
BIRT is an open source reporting system for web applications, especially those based on Java and J2EE. BIRT has two main components: a report designer based on Eclipse™, and a runtime component that can be added to an application server (such as DME). BIRT also contains a charting engine that lets you add charts to your reports.
Furthermore, a number of standard reports are included with DME. These reports are fully functional, and can furthermore be used as a basis for further development. Note that when the reports are run, the dates and times selected in the Period filter are used as parameter for the report. This means that if you change the date and time and click Show period, the report will be run again showing data for the new span of time. See Standard reports.
If you want to develop your own reports or customize the template reports supplied by Soliton Systems, do the following:
Note that you must get BIRT version 2.6.1.
It is highly recommended that you work with BIRT using a read-only user account on the database in order to prevent accidental data loss. Ask your Database Administrator about this.
For help on using the BIRT report designer, see the built-in online help for that product, or visit the Eclipse BIRT website.
New reports
When you have made a new report, use the Upload report action to load it to the DME server (see Upload report).
Editing existing reports
To edit an existing report, first download the report file to your local drive, edit it, and then upload it to the DME server again (see Edit report).
DME upgrades
Whenever DME releases a server upgrade (a new version or a Service Pack), the template reports shipped with DME are included in the database of the new installation. The reports may have been amended compared with the previous version, or new ones added. When you launch DME for the first time after the upgrade, any new template reports are extracted from the database and installed into the report directory. However, in order to not overwrite any customization made by you in the template reports, DME only installs reports that do not already exist in the reports directory:
C:\Program Files\dme\jboss\server\default\filestore\reports (Windows)
/var/dme/instances/base/filestore/reports (Linux)
This means that if you want DME to install a fresh copy of a report, you must delete the existing report file (<reportname>.rptdesign) from the reports directory, and restart the DME server. This will cause DME to re-install the template report from the database and make it available from the DME web interface.
The following sections describe the Analyzer reports page menu, which contains functions to manage and view BIRT reports in DME.