BIRT and PHP Reporting

Actuate Corporation and Zend Technologies have teamed up to allow PHP developers to quickly add reporting capabilities to web applications using Actuate BIRT.

The collaboration between Zend and Actuate has resulted in new capabilities in the 3.0 version of the Zend Platform. Zend Platform 3.0 allows PHP developers to quickly integrate reporting capabilities, including charting, to web applications by calling Actuate BIRT reports via the Zend Java Bridge. Web application developers are often faced with strong end-user demands for reports that integrate and summarize application data. This new functionality will provide an efficient alternative to hand coding reports from scratch using PHP, and will ensure that more PHP applications are up and running quickly with the reporting capabilities that they need. Developers who have built reports using Actuate BIRT will now be able to easily distribute those reports via PHP applications.
Functionality that is now available to PHP developers includes:

• Flexible report output formats that deliver single or multi-page PDF or HTML reports in several viewing and printed formats using parameters, multiple sections, grouping levels, charts, and more. Report content can also easily be exported to CSV format.
• Reports built on top of any data source that enable report developers to access and generate reports from SQL databases, text files, or XML.
• Easy-to-use visual design environment that enables developers to create and deploy reports in minutes via a simple, robust, wizard-driven interface.
• Powerful integrated charting that enables charting reports to be built easily in a variety of types which include Line, Bar, Pie, Meters, Area, Scatter and Stock. The charts can be output in different formats including Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).