This is great because we can now get into the heart of BIRT (report
design); but first, we will get acquainted with the BIRT development environment.
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The BIRT Environment and
Your First Report
OK, so now you have BIRT installed; what now? You have heard so many great
things about the BIRT Report Designer, and are eager to jump into creating some
reports. However, you haven't ever worked with Eclipse or BIRT for that matter. At
first glance the BIRT Designer can look a little intimidating, and in some cases you
may not even see the BIRT Designer on your first run. That's OK. In this chapter we
will get acquainted with the BIRT working environment, also known as the BIRT
Perspective in Eclipse lingo, and we will get started on creating a basic report.
A Basic Scenario
When I teach people about development topics of any sort, I like to use scenarios.
This book will be no different. These scenarios provide a basic context for the learner
to relate the topic information to, and hopefully facilitate absorbing the information.
In this chapter we will look at a very simple scenario, in order to get us started
with our first report. You work for a toy company called Classic Cars. Classic Cars
specializes in selling models of classic cars and motorcycles. Classic Cars uses a
centralized database for all company operations, such as employee listing, offices,
customers, products, and sales history.
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