It seems that BIRT is really something like the Framework.
- It has some assets and code
- These assets and code are used throught the Base Applications and
SpecialPurpose components whenever you need to display a graphic or
dashboard, provide an interactive drilldown or want to produce a nice
report for display or PDF output.
It is not really a separate component.
Guess what! It sounds like a sub-project is the right way to handle this
so people with the right skillsets can drive the process.
In the meantime, the list of tasks identified by Taher is a very good
starting point.
Any idea of the number of manhours required to produce an initial
toolkit that the application developers could use to integrate Analytics
into each component that requires it? How much of this stuff exists
buried in applications or in customized OFBIz implementation that could
be contributed.
Does anybody see why this is essential to the competitive position of
OFBiz or is it just a "nice to have"?
This goes back to my earlier commens and "marketing" research when
someone was looking to get Gartner to look at OFBiz.
The lack of integrated Analytics would be a big negative in comparison
with other ERPs.
For building eCommerce websites reporting is not a big deal but if you
are going to provide an ERP, the CFO is going to want dashboards, the
production manager will vote for the system that gives him strong tools
to see comparisons and trends in order backlog, production, quality,
manpower utilisation, costs, etc.
The VP HR is going to want graphs on departmental manpower costs,
overtime, expenses etc. that can be shown to the CFO and CEO at a
moments notice.
Ron
On 26/02/2015 10:21 AM, Taher Alkhateeb wrote:
Hi Ron and everyone,
BIRT is very powerful but by no means easy! I was working for a while on
developing an infrastructure for OFBIZ to make it a bit more streamlined across
the pages but stopped after a while for two reasons: 1) it was bigger work than
I expected and 2) the community seemed uninterested in the component as you can
observe in our discussion in this JIRA for example:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5070
To make it reach its potential, there are multiple things to do of which I did
some partially:
- Create a BIRT library (filename.rptlibrary) which hold references to
javascript source files, CSS files, etc .. and it contains all the assets
(logo, fonts, colors, you name it) so that you have a unified look and feel and
unified data preparation scripts for all reports
- Create CSS files unifying the look and feel of all reports
- Create javascript files that contain scripts for repeating tasks (library
imports, UI label preparation, report layout, parameter import and validation,
exception handling etc ...)
- Create sub-libraries that handle business intelligence requirements. For
example, you can prepare common cubes on the main entities of the system
(Party, Product, OrderHeader, Accounting Transaction, etc ...)
- Finally, once the above is in place, then you can design a whole heap of
reports, OLAP cupes, Charts, you name it!
The question remains, is the community interested in adopting BIRT as its
reporting tool? If not, then renaming it would not make much sense given the
effort put into fixing all the links to the component and anything else that
might break from the rename.
My 2 cents!
Cheers
Taher Alkhateeb
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Wheeler" <rwhee...@artifact-software.com>
To: dev@ofbiz.apache.org
Sent: Thursday, 26 February, 2015 6:01:09 PM
Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Change name of birt component
You think that it might be more aspirational than real?
http://bod-wiki.birtondemand.com/wiki/index.php?title=App_Mashboard is
the kind of thing that I expect OFBiz to support one day.
Perhaps a more ambitious name might encourage someone to take an
interest in enhancing the capabilities.
"BIRT" is just the name of a tool and gives no idea about what
functionality is possible.
"Reports" seems to understate what BIRT can do.
I am not sure of the work required to enhance the existing interface to
produce more of what BIRT can do OOTB but it seems to be something
pretty easy
http://www.theserverside.com/news/1364376/Using-Eclipse-BIRT-Report-Libraries-and-Templates
Ron
On 26/02/2015 9:19 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
My main concern is that assigning a generic name (such as "reports" or
"analytics") to a component that is just one very specific way (and in some ways
limited/questionable for the way the Birt has been integrated) to implement an integration with a
reporting tool may be misleading.
Jacopo
On Feb 26, 2015, at 12:46 AM, Pierre Smits <pierre.sm...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
Currently, all component names describe - in one word - what the components
are about and what kind of functionality the user - from a business point
of view - can expect. As examples: accounting is related to the various
accounting (financial, gl, invoicing, payment, , etc) functions and
services, and projectmgr is related to program and project management,
project task assignment and time registration.
The birt component is a bit the odd one out. The name doesn't say in that
one word what it delivers. In stead it is an acronym for a specific third
party integration solution and another open source project with the same
name (birt, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIRT_Project ). One could
even say it is the name of a tool, not the name of a business
functionality.
In order to be able to increase awareness of the multitude of business
functionalities (as could be done by using the name of the components) and
improve adoption, I suggest to change the name (and the references to it in
the component and others) to something that is more to the point business
wise.
I propose we rename it to 'reports'.
What do you think?
Best regards,
Pierre Smits
*ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
Services & Solutions for Cloud-
Based Manufacturing, Professional
Services and Retail & Trade
http://www.orrtiz.com
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwhee...@artifact-software.com
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
