With BIRT's report libraries, these
kinds of common tasks??”from the same report queries, Data Sources, up to visual
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elements and output??”can be stored in a central report Library and made accessible
to other developers to reuse and share their components. This is even useful in
single-developer situations to keep from having to rebuild commonly used objects in
different reports.
In BIRT, Libraries are very similar in structure and design to a report document.
The main difference is that Libraries can be referenced inside Report Designs, and
the Visual editor for Libraries will be different. When there are changes to Library
elements, these changes will trickle down into the Report Designs that are using them.
The only exception is with Chart elements in versions of BIRT prior to 2.2.
Creating a New Library
As with Report Designs, a Library can be created using either the New option under
the Navigator or the File menu. This is nice because it does not deviate from the
expected behavior. In the following example, we are going to create a new Report
Project called Classic Cars Library and create a new Library with it.
1. From either the Navigator or File menu, go to New | Project.... Name the
project as Classic Cars ??“ With Library.
2. In the Navigator, right-click on Classic Cars ??“ With Library, and choose
New | Library.
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