Design BIRT Reports on IBM Informix Data

The CData JDBC Driver for IBM Informix integrates connectivity to IBM Informix APIs into your data-driven Java applications. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for IBM Informix with the BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tools) platform to create BIRT reports that reflect changes to your data in real time.

1. If you have not already done so, install the BIRT Framework plugin and the Database Development plugin for Eclipse.
2. Click File -> New -> Report. The Report Design perspective is opened.
3. In the Data Explorer, right-click Data Sources and click New Data Source.
4. Select the Create from a Data Source Type in the Following List option and select JDBC Data Source.
5. Click Manage Drivers and add the driver JAR, located in the lib subfolder of the installation folder.
6. In the Database URL box, enter the JDBC URL containing the connection string.

   Set the following properties to connect to IBM Informix

   • Server: Set this to the name of the server running IBM Informix.
   • Port: Set this to the port the IBM Informix server is listening on.
   • Database: Set this to the name of the IBM Informix database.
   • User: Set this to the username of a user allowed to access the database.
   • Password: Set this to the password of a user allowed to access the database.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the IBM Informix JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.informix.jar

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   When you configure the JDBC URL, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

   A typical JDBC URL is below:

   jdbc:informix:Server=10.0.1.2;Port=50000;User=admin;Password=admin;Database=test;
7. Right-click the Data Sets folder and select the JDBC data source for IBM Informix.
8. In the resulting dialog, build the SELECT query to be used to retrieve the data for the report. This article uses the following query: SELECT Id, Price FROM Books WHERE Category = 'US'
9. In the Palette, drag a Chart onto the editor. The chart wizard is displayed.
10. After selecting the chart type, drag columns onto the chart fields on the Select Data tab.
11. Click Run -> View Report -> In Web Viewer to view the report.

Your BIRT reports can now pick up any updates to IBM Informix data.

To publish the report to your application server, add the driver JAR to the BIRT Viewer's classpath. For more information, see the CData KB for guides to deploying the JDBC Driver on Java application servers.