Installing a BIRT report designer is a straightforward task. If you extract the archive file to the appropriate location and the required supporting files are also available in the expected location, your BIRT report designer will work. One of the first steps in troubleshooting an installation problem is confirming that all files are in the correct location.
Verify that the /eclipse/plugins directory contains JAR files whose names begin with org.eclipse.birt, org.eclipse.emf, and org.eclipse.gef. The following sections describe troubleshooting steps that resolve two common installation errors.
Avoiding cache conflicts after you install a BIRT report designer
Eclipse caches information about plug-ins for faster start-up. After you install or upgrade BIRT Report Designer or BIRT RCP Report Designer, using a cached copy of certain pages can lead to errors or missing functionality. The symptoms of this problem include the following conditions:
The Report Design perspective does not appear in Eclipse.
You receive a message that an error occurred when you open a report or use the Report Design perspective.
JDBC drivers that you installed do not appear in the driver manager.
The solution is to remove the cached information. The recommended practice is to start either Eclipse or BIRT RCP Report Designer from the command line with the -clean option.
To start Eclipse, use the following command:
eclipse.exe -clean
To start BIRT RCP Report Designer, use the following command:
BIRT.exe -clean
Specifying a Java Virtual Machine when starting a BIRT report designer
You can specify which Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to use when you start a BIRT report designer. This specification can be important, particularly for users on Linux, when path and permission problems prevent the report designer from locating an appropriate JVM to use.
On Windows and Linux systems, you can either start a BIRT report designer from the command line or create a command file or shell script that calls the appropriate executable file with the JVM path. Alternatively, specify the command-line option in the eclipse.ini file in the BIRT installation folder.
How to specify which JVM to use when you start a BIRT report designer
The example in this section uses BIRT Report Designer on a Windows system. On the command line, type a command similar to:
The Report Design perspective does not appear in Eclipse.