BIRT is an Eclipse-based open source reporting system for web applications, especially those based on Java and J2EE.
Jasper Report is a powerful open source Java reporting tool that has the ability to deliver rich content onto the screen, to the printer or into PDF, HTML, XLS, CSV and XML files.
JasperReports- Easiest integrate to application and flexible from a developers standpoint.
- Supports a large number of export formats.
- Do not have free report designer tool.
Eclipse BIRT- Excellent report designer and charting support. I can get create reports in a matter of minutes with great ease.
- Great support for reports with multiple datasources. However, it is also tedious to maintain extra datasource just for report.
- Harder to integrate into currently application.
Currently, when I deploy report to BIRT under tomcat environment. I need deploy it to a separate application. This application is totally used to handle all reports. For small application, it makes things complex and I am strong worry about its security. I also try to integrate BIRT report to my application, however it makes my WAR file pretty big (20M more).
BIRT is still a relatively young project and there lots more work that needs to be done. Maybe I need wait for next BIRT release.
Because my application is using
spring framework. It does support a view to pretty easy integrate my JasperReport. This allow me to focus on my report design instead of other stuff. At the same time, code is pretty small and clean. So I decide to choose JasperReport as my report engine temporary.
Pro Spring has a good example shows how to integrate JasperReport into your application.
The order of this configure file is pretty important. First, it should be general viewResolver, then comes japserReportViewResolver.
