Deploying Eclipse BIRT Web Viewer to GlassFish 3.0.1 on Ubuntu 10.10

Eclipse BIRT is free / open source reporting engine for Java.

A commercial BIRT Report Server is available from Actuate (the company behind Eclipse BIRT). While Eclipse BIRT does not provide a free/open source reporting server, the BIRT Runtime provides a simple Eclipse BIRT Web Viewer.

Eclipse BIRT Web Viewer installation instructions for several Java EE application servers are here.

Here I share my own experience installing Eclipse BIRT 2.6.1 Web Viewer under GlassFish 3.0.1 Java EE Application Server :

1. Install package sun-java6-jdk dan ttf-mscorefonts-installer
Package ttf-mscorefonts-installer contains Microsoft fonts needed by some reports.


2. Install GlassFish 3.0.1+.
   When asked for JVM, enter: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

Run GlassFish. In Terminal, go to GlassFish directory and type:

bin/asadmin start-domain

Default GlassFish domain is : domain1

It will show something like:

tuneeca@geulis:~/glassfishv3$ bin/asadmin start-domain
Waiting for DAS to start ......
Started domain: domain1
Domain location: /home/tuneeca/glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1
Log file: /home/tuneeca/glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1/logs/server.log
Admin port for the domain: 4848
Command start-domain executed successfully.

Now that GlassFish is running, you need to deploy Eclipse BIRT Web Viewer:

1. Download birt-runtime-*.zip from BIRT Downloads under BIRT Runtime.
   Inside this archive there is birt.war file.
   
2. Deploy birt.war through GlassFish admin ( http://localhost:4848/ ) or by copying birt.war to folder glassfish/domains/domain1/autodeploy/
   In the log file glassfish/domains/domain1/server.log (to follow this file, use tail -f ) you should see something like :
   [#|2010-11-22T16:55:54.411+0700|INFO|glassfish3.0.1|javax.enterprise.system.tools.deployment.org.glassfish.deployment.common|_ThreadID=23;_ThreadName=Thread-1;|[AutoDeploy] Selecting file /home/tuneeca/glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1/autodeploy/birt.war for autodeployment.|#]

3. Check BIRT Web Viewer is running at : http://localhost:8080/birt/

You will need two additional libraries, Apache Commons Logging and JDBC Driver for your database.

Commons Logging

Without this, you'll get an error: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory

birt.war needs Apache Commons Logging.

Copy the file commons-logging-1.1.1.jar to folder glassfish/domains/domain1/applications/birt/WEB-INF/lib
Then reload the webapp :

touch glassfish/domains/domain1/applications/birt/.reload

MySQL JDBC Driver

If you get an exception like:

An exception occurred during processing. Please see the following message for details:
Cannot open the connection for the driver: org.eclipse.birt.report.data.oda.jdbc.dbprofile.
    org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.oda.OdaException ;
    java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

For MySQL:
Copy file mysql-connector-java-5.1.13.jar to glassfish/domains/domain1/applications/birt/WEB-INF/platform/plugins/org.eclipse.birt.report.data.oda.jdbc_[version]/drivers

For other databases, copy the appropriate JDBC driver(s).

Go to: http://localhost:8080/birt/

Now you should be able to run BIRT reports over the web, on GlassFish!