Developing Business Intelligence Report using Open Source Technology

On Feb 11, 2010 Shaku Atre, Mark Gamble and Vazi Okhandiar presented a webinar on Interactive Analytics for Business analysts and developers to become familiar with using Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT) to design and develop Interactive Financial Dashboards and Business Intelligence (BI) Applications with rich data visualizations.

BIRT is a top level project within Eclipse and is the fastest growing open source reporting technology with over 5 million downloads in the past 2 years. Actuate founded and continues to co-lead the Eclipse BIRT open source project.

The presentation consisted of following three parts:

• Part 1: Introduction to Business Analytics
• Part 2: Introduction to Actuate BIRT
• Part 3: Introduction to Eclipse BIRT

PART 1: Introduction to Business Analytics

Shaku Atre, Founder and President of the Atre Group, Inc., presented on an introduction to Interactive Analytics, the components of an interactive analytic application and the use of an interactive analytic application in a Financial Industry. The presentation included developing cost effective Business Intelligence (BI) application using Open Source, a difference between a "good" software and "bad" software and how BI applications have evolved over the decade.

Video Part 1: Introduction to Business Intelligence by Shaku Atre

PART 2: Introduction to Actuate's BIRT Reporting Tool

Mark Gamble, the Head of the Actuate Marketing Applications Team, included an overview of Actuate and an introduction to Actuate Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT). Mark Gamble also demonstrated the use of Actuate BIRT to develop various types of reports and dashboards for analyzing business data.

Video 2: Introduction to Actuate BIRT by Mark Gambel

Part 3: Introduction to Developing BI Application using Eclipse BIRT

Vazi Okhandiar, Founder of NR Computer Learning Center and a Vice President of Technology at mLogica, Inc, presented on the introduction to the BIRT Architecture, Eclipse BIRT installation and JDBC & MySQL configuration. Vazi also gave a live presentation illustrating how simple report can be created using Eclipse BIRT and MySQL.

Video 3: Introduction to Eclipse BIRT by Vazi Okhandiar

About the Presenters:
Shaku Atre
Shaku is a world-renowned expert on Business Intelligence and database technology. Shaku is the Founder and President of the Atre Group, Inc., and has written six, very successful books on database-related topics, which have been translated in many languages. She worked for IBM Germany, IBM World Trade Corp. in various capacities. She was an IT Partner at Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Mark Gamble
Mark is the Head of the Actuate Marketing Applications team that builds and maintains reference Actuate applications. He joined Actuate in 1999 as a sales engineer in Detroit, supporting sales efforts for Actuate Version 3. With thorough knowledge of Actuate product capabilities and business applications, Mark emphasizes both technical and business benefits in his presentations. Depth of knowledge and engaging style make him a popular choice for live Actuate demonstrations.

Vazi Okhandiar, PMP, MCT, MBA, MSCS, BSEE

Vazi is an Executive Director at NR Computer Learning Center and a Vice President of Technology at mLogica, Inc. She has over 20 years of experience in consulting and providing training in IT Project Management, application architecture, design and web-based application development. She has worked for Toyota, General Motors (GM), Electronic Data System (EDS) and Computer Science Corporation (CSC).