Creating BIRT Reports for Maximo

Presenter: Rachita Bhatia

For audio, please dial: 1-888-296-6500 (Code: 738859#)

About the Presenter: Rachita Bhatia
Rachita Bhatia is an Application Consultant at Ontracks’ Canadian practice in the
Edmonton office. Rachita is an EIT and gained her Bachelors of Science degree in
Computer Engineering from the University of Alberta. As an experienced Maximo
consultant, she has a deep expertise in BIRT reporting, SQL, automation scripting and
data integration. Rachita is also an IBM Certified Maximo Deployment Professional
and has worked on various projects for clients in the Oil & Gas and transportation
industries.

Questions on Maximo? Contact Rachita directly at:

Email: rbhatia@ontracksconsulting.com
Phone: 780-637-4130 ext 241
Agenda
• Overview of the BIRT Designer
• Creating A New BIRT Report for Maximo
• Importing Reports into Maximo
• Modifying Existing Reports Using BIRT
• Demo
• Questions
Reporting in Maximo
• Two types of reports in Maximo – Query based reports,
and BIRT reports
• Query-based reports (Ad Hoc Reports) are set up in
Maximo in the Object Structures application. They give
the user freedom to choose what fields they want to
report on.
• There are limitations to QBRs in terms of formatting,
calculations, viewing data in a graphical form etc.
• This is where BIRT reports are more useful. These are set
up outside of Maximo and imported into the application.
BIRT Reports
• BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool) reports
are saved into Maximo and can be ran from the
application at any given time to provide up to date
information about a chosen set of records.
• These reports cannot be edited dynamically.
• To add or remove a field on the BIRT report, or to modify
its appearance, we open the “report design file” in a
software called the BIRT Designer.
• Out of the box, Maximo comes with saved reports for
every application. These reports have their design files
saved in the SMP directory and we can import these
reports into BIRT designer to modify them.
BIRT Designer
Creating a BIRT Report
• Maximo comes with a set of
templates and style sheets that
can be used as a starting point for
creating BIRT reports. These
templates ensure uniformity with
existing reports, and provide the
scripting classes needed for
report integration.
• After BIRT designer is set up and
the Maximo library is imported,
we can create a new report by
choosing one of the templates.
• Once we have the blank template
open, we next need to add data
to it. This data comes from the
tables stored in the Maximo
database.
Creating a BIRT Report – contd.
• For adding data to the report, gather
all the columns we’d like to see on
the report in the form of a SQL query.
The best way to do this would be to
use SSMS for SQL Server or SQL
Developer for an Oracle Database.
• Once our query is formed, and we
have tested that it returns the
desired result set, we set up the
query in BIRT.
• Then we specify the columns to be
fetched from the database into the
report, add those columns to the
report layout and set the desired
format.
• We can also preview our reports in
BIRT before importing them to
Maximo.
Importing Reports into Maximo
• Once we are satisfied with how our reports looks in
BIRT, we can then import it into Maximo using the
Report Administration application.
Modifying Existing Reports
• If we want to add or remove columns from existing
reports in Maximo, we can open the report design
files in BIRT and modify the SQL query for the
existing report.
• We can also extend existing Ad hoc reports by
exporting them from the Maximo database and
adding more information to them.
Helpful Tips for Modifying BIRT Reports
• To export a report from the Maximo database, use this query and
copy/paste the result into a notepad, then save it with a .rptdesign
extension – you can now open it in BIRT Designer:
– Select CAST(design as XML) from reportdesign where
reportname = ‘<reportname.rptdesign>’

• If the long description of an attribute in Maximo has rich text

formatting or HTML tags, those can be displayed in the BIRT report
by using the Dynamic Text element.
• We can add conditional formatting such as highlighting duplicates
by adding Java code to the reports.
• Always remember to take a backup of the existing report design file
before editing it, since the BIRT designer automatically saves the file
when we switch to the XML/Preview tabs.
BIRT Demo
Questions?
For questions, please contact Rachita Bhatia at:
780-637-4130 ext 241 or
rbhatia@ontracksconsulting.com

Thank you!