Eclipse: BIRT Team Saves the Day, All-In-One Package Available for Eclipse/BIRT

(Update: My issues with Callisto under Ubuntu were fixed, as described here.)

Apparently, the update feature, or the files in the update repository for Eclipse Callisto are not quite as robust as they should be. BIRT 2.1 had numerous problems under Windows, such as missing parameter pages, and under Linux there were such catastrophic failures the likes of which almost caused me to toss my poor laptop out the window. Fortunately, I was directed by a kind and wise soul to the BIRT projects All-In-One release package of Callisto/BIRT, which cured all my ails. The only missing component was the iText jar file used in exporting to PDF. Instructions for installing it were hinted at in step 8 of my last article, however all that is required is to download the iText.jar file and install into the <eclipse root>/plugins/com.lowagie.itext_<version>/lib folder, and to install the proper JDBC drivers. This fixed the issues I was having where my parameters pages were not being displayed when running my reports, among other headaches.

It’s a good thing the BIRT team picked up the ball and delivered where others fumbled. It seems that the Eclipse team didn’t have all their bases covered for this release. I am glad that the BIRT team picked up the slack and got the All-In-One package out, since BIRT is the main package I use in Eclipse. While some of the Eclipse packages in this release are really powerful, such as BIRT and the Java Development environment, and really show what the Eclipse platform, others, such as the C/C++ development environment, really fall flat. If your going to use Eclipse, my advice for the time being is avoid the update utility inside of Eclipse and find one of the All-In-One packages until some better updates can be released.