An alternative is to release a BIRT
extension package on BIRT 2.1.1.
The package will only contain the new plugin extensions that adds new data access ODA drivers and new
emitters. A RCP/SWT based report viewer can also be released as a new package. The benefit of this approach is
that it helps users to avoid retesting/redeploy their entire BIRT integration.
Wenfeng
-----Original
Message-----
From: birt-pmc-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:birt-pmc-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Scott Rosenbaum
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006
11:27 AM
To: BIRT PMC
Subject: [birt-pmc] Dot Releases
All,
I have been thinking some more about the topic of 2.1.X releases over the next
year. I think that planning for 2.1.1 to be timed with the platform
release of the same is a really good idea.
I think that we may want to consider additional planned 2.1.X releases. I realize that we are fairly
resource constrained over the next year, so we would want to limit the scope of
these 2.1.X releases to a fairly narrow set of criteria. The items I
would propose for inclusion in 2.1.X release are:
1) Bugzilla Blocker bugs
2) Community Code Contributions
3) Bugzilla Critical bugs
I would prioritize items based on that type of schedule. Obviously, if we
come up to a release date and there are no changes that fit into one of those
categories, then we would not do a product release. The reason that I
would like to see the releases as planned as opposed to adHoc, is that I think
it would help other companies plan for any code contributions. Up until
now, the product has been moving so fast that it would be really difficult for
any outside code contributions. In the year following the release of 2.1,
I think that we will have a much larger community of users, and I think that
the number of worthy contributions will grow. I think that things like the
JDO data source from the JFire team could really add some functional
improvement to BIRT at a relatively low resource cost. I actually think
that there are a lot of potential contributions:
- Oracle RefCursor oda.jdbc extension.
- XLS emitter
- oda.hibernate extension
- client side scripting control (browser scripting control)
- RCP view components (report viewer, parameters, TOC) as opposed to
running in a web environment
I am sure that analysis of the Bugzilla database could identify a number of
other enhancements.
I realize that there are a lot of other issues in the equation, like who is
going to pay for those releases, but I think that we should way the potential
gains in terms of constant product improvement, new features, and expanding the
BIRT community in the equation.
Scott
