| [birt-dev] Eclipse BIRT PMC Meeting Minutes - Monday, January 22, 2007 |
Meeting
BIRT PMC, 10am Pacific, Monday, January 22, 2007
Attendees
Wenfeng Li - BIRT PMC Lead - Actuate Corporation (www.actuate.com)
Paul Clenahan - BIRT PMC - Actuate Corporation (www.actuate.com)
Scott Rosenbaum - BIRT PMC - Innovent Solutions (www.innoventsolutions.com)
Jason Weathersby - BIRT PMC - Actuate Corporation (www.actuate.com)
Mike Fox - BIRT PMC - IBM Corporation (www.ibm.com)
Larry Liang - BIRT PMC - InetSoft Technology Corporation (www.inetsoft.com)
Minutes
Meeting Logistics
There was no BIRT PMC meeting last week due to the MLK public holiday.
BIRT 2.1.2 Development
This release continues to track for it's Feb release. Since the last PMC meeting, 7 additional Bugzilla items were added to the 2.1.2 list, bringing the total to 55.
General Information
BIRT 2.1.2 is the second maintenance release in the BIRT 2.1 release series and is intended to be narrow in scope since the development team is concentrating on BIRT 2.2. BIRT 2.1.2 is part of the Callisto coordinated maintenance release plan (see http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Callisto_Coordinated_Maintenance). The 2.1.2 release is focused on addressing critical bugs identified by the community, including any critical issues raised by other Callisto projects.
The Development Plan for BIRT 2.1.2 is available on the Eclipse BIRT pages (http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/project/project_plan_R2_1_2.php).
For a list of bugs assigned to the release, refer to Bugzilla: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/buglist.cgi?classification=BIRT&target_milestone=2.1.2
BIRT 2.2 Development
BIRT 2.2 Milestone 4 was released on January 17th. Milestone 4 includes a number of exciting new capabilities and the BIRT team is looking for feedback on these features. For information on what is in the release, refer to the BIRT 2.2 M4 New and Notable document (http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/project/notable2.2M4.php). Please provide feedback on M4 or the N&N document via Bugzilla.
General Information
The next major release of BIRT is BIRT 2.2, scheduled for June 2007 as part of the Europa Simultaneous Release (http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Europa_Simultaneous_Release).
The draft BIRT 2.2 Development Plan has been published for review: http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/project/project_plan_R2_2_0.php. As previously indicated, not all projects in BIRT 2.2 are committed/staffed yet. While we are still in the process of research to determine project scope and feasibility for the release, we have identified one project that we do not have the resources to address: the XML Output Emitter. We would welcome any proposals from the broader community for assistance in developing this project.
A number of BIRT Project Specifications (BPS) relating to BIRT 2.2 have been posted on the BIRT Wiki.
BIRT 2.2 Development: Java 1.5 Dependency
At the last PMC meeting, we discussed the issue of Java 1.5 dependency that had been introduced by EMF 2.3. For BIRT, we want to ensure that we retain compatibility for Java 1.4.x at application runtime -- since many corporate environments will continue to run Java 1.4 platforms for some time. The development team have researched the issue and determined that we can retain compatibility with Java 1.4 by ensuring that BIRT 2.2 is fully compatible with the following technology stack:
JRE 1.4.x
Eclipse Platform 3.3
GEF 3.3
EMF 2.2
DTP 1.5
WTP 2.0
(In other words, we will test with EMF 2.2 rather than EMF 2.3. EMF 2.3 has the dependency on Java 1.5).
In addition, we will test JRE 1.5.x and EMF 2.3 to ensure BIRT is compatible with the full Europa stack. This should not be an issue since the EMF team claim full backwards compatibility for EMF 2.3.
The development plan for BIRT 2.2 will be updated accordingly.
BIRT 2.2 Development: XML Output Emitter
The XML Output Emitter project is listed in the BIRT 2.2 Development Plan but is currently unstaffed. The BIRT PMC is looking for community contributions to enable this project to move ahead.
If we do not get any proposals in the next 2 weeks, we will remove this from the BIRT 2.2 Development Plan.
BIRT Build and Debug Instructions
Jason indicated that he wants to improve the build and debug instructions for BIRT on the website. He receives a number of questions in this area from the community that he wants to proactively address. Wenfeng and Jason will work offline to improve this information on the website.
BIRT Project Voting Process
There has been a request from the community to better document what the voting processes are in the BIRT project. This was specifically for the process on how Milestone and Release builds are released to the community, although any other processes should be considered.
Paul will look at how/where to best document this and work with Jason to make the updates to the web site.
iText Status
The iText library used by BIRT to generate PDF output continues to work it's way through the Eclipse IP process. Once iText has passed IP review, we plan to include this in the BIRT downloads to simplify the installation process for BIRT.
EclipseCon Short Talks
The reporting track will have six Short Talks, each a lightning fast ten minute presentation on one specific BIRT feature. We are currently still accepting proposals for reporting Short Talks. If you are going to be at EclipseCon, and you have experience with BIRT, please submit a proposal (http://www.eclipsecon.org/2007/index.php?page=submissions/).
BIRT Events
The following upcoming events will include talks on BIRT and/or Actuate sponsored BIRT booths:
EclipseCon 2007 on March 5-8, 2007 - Santa Clara, CA - http://www.eclipsecon.org/2007/ - 5 long (1 hour) sessions, 6 short (10 mins) sessions, 1 demo/panel, 2 demos, 1 long (3hrs) tutorials, and 3 short (2hr) tutorials allocated to BIRT.
BIRT Articles
The following articles have recently been published on BIRT:
Eclipse Magazine - January 2007 - Deploying the BIRT Viewer to JBoss by Jason Weathersby - http://www.eclipsemag.net/
Eclipse Magazine - December 2006 - POJO Access Using BIRT by David Trainor and Jason Weathersby - http://www.eclipsemag.net/
Java Developers Journal - October 2006 - Java Feature: Developing an Eclipse BIRT Report Item Extension by Jason Weathersby; Iana Chatalbasheva; Tom Bondur - http://java.sys-con.com/read/286915.htm
Eclipse Magazine - September 2006 - BIRT Reporting Interactivity by David Trainor and Jason Weathersby - http://www.eclipsemag.net/
Eclipse Magazine - August 2006 - Using BIRT 2.1 for Embedded Reporting by Jason Weathersby - http://www.eclipsemag.net/
ONJava - July 26, 2006 - Deploying BIRT by Jason Weathersby - http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2006/07/26/deploying-birt.html
Eclipse Review Magazine - Spring 2006 - Business Intelligence And Reporting Tools by Jason Weathersby and Krishna Venkatraman - http://www.eclipsereview.com/issues/eclipsereview_200606.pdf