About the report layout elements
BIRT Report Designer provides a variety of elements for building a report. To lay out a report, drag report elements from the palette and drop them on the page in the layout editor. Report elements fall into two general categories:
*Elements that display information
*Elements that organize multiple elements in a section
Table 6-1 provides a summary of the report elements that you can use to lay out your report. Details about using these report elements appear elsewhere.
Table 6-1 Report layout elements
Report element
Description
Label
Displays a piece of static text.
Text
Displays text that can contain HTML formatting and dynamic values.
Dynamic text
Displays memo or Character Large Object (CLOB) data from a data set field. The data typically consists of large amounts of text.
Data
Displays a computed value or a value from a data set field.
Image
Displays any image that a web browser supports.
Grid
Organizes multiple report elements in a static table. The number of rows in a static table is fixed at design time.
Table
Organizes data from a data set in a dynamic table. The number of rows in a table is determined by the number of data rows returned by the data set when the report is run.
List
Organizes data from a data set in a variety of layouts. By contrast, a table element organizes elements in a row‑and‑column format only.
Chart
Displays data from a data set in a variety of chart types, including pie charts, bar charts, and line charts.
Cross tab
Displays summary, or aggregate, data in a row‑and‑column matrix that is similar to a spreadsheet.