How can I access application-specific metadata to simplify report design?
Some applications want to integrate BIRT into their application so that BIRT has access to the Business Process Model (BPM) (or other metadata) for the application’s data objects and their schemas. This avoids having the report designer duplicate the efforts of the BPM designer. The result allow the report design tool to have Business Process Intelligence built-in. To see how, let’s divide reporting into two steps: design and execution. The design step is the one where BPM integration would likely occur. A BIRT design is an XML file that contains instructions for accessing a data source, transforming the data (sorting, filtering, totals), and presenting the results. An integrated application needs the ability to build a query based on the BPM. Once the report developer has that data, he’d use BIRT’s features for identifying totals and formatting the results. The result of this process would be a BIRT XML design file that the BIRT Report Engine executes to produce your final report. The
