Adding new advanced chart types in BIRT Full Proposal

Student: Karsten Knese
Mentor : Ahti Kitsik

This is the full proposal i wrote for this year GSoC.

Project Title

Adding new advanced chart types in BIRT

Project Summary

BIRT is an Eclipse based reporting system. Reports created with BIRT can be designed within features like different kind of charts and diagrams. BIRT brings several chart types from core. These are types like pie or area diagrams.
Like I read in Bugzilla there are many wishs for new chart types.

My project includes three new types in BIRT.

  1. Donut diagram: http://www.dotnetcharting.com/images/donut_3d.png
  2. Radar diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_chart
  3. Venn diagram:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram

Project Proposal

Like I wrote on the idea list is BIRT a Eclipse-based reporting system. This project would insert three new chart types. The idea of the three types came from 'helpwanted' entries in Bugzilla.

Donut chart:
Like the name already says, this chart or diagram looks like a donut. For me, this will be the first chart type I concentrate on, because I plan do implement this idea based on the existing pie chart. This will be a good start to come along with the source code and the used technology of BIRT.

Venn chart:
Venn chart is often used the clear breakpoints, differences and especially interferences of more than one group of information or datasets. You often find this kind of chart type in mathematics or statistic researches to clear the intersections. After creating the Donut chart, this will be the type with the highest priority, because it's impressive. For me as a developer, it will be exciting creating source code and do the needed calculations.

Radar chart:
This is the third type I want to implement. The features of this type is to show information categorized in logical areas or logical directions. An example often used in school is learning statistics. The question could be in which way pupils learn the best way. The categories then could be: learning by hearing, learning by writing, learning by seeing, learning by talking. So you have a direct comparison of each category.

I think this project could be a good one for me to improve my skills as a developer. I have to learn and read a lot of the complete OSGi and BIRT chart engine technology, but I really motivated to do so. Your Commitment

I'll spend as much time as I can to solve this project. Getting involved in such great community and having the chance to work on real projects make me happily spending time to do my work correctly. At the beginning I have to read a lot of the whole technologies and common ways to solve problems, but I think this is the most interesting part of GSoC. For me, it's very exciting getting new knowledges and skills of software engineering and programming.

I will be able to participate interactive things like online meetings. I am not a professional developer or an Eclipse expert. So I hope getting help from experts or professional members of the community as much as neccessary. Online meetings give the chance for both parts, student and mentor, to exchange collected experiences, review current code and give the further trends in the right way.

As I am a student on the University of Coorporate Education in Germany, I will have to work during time of GSoC. This way of education contains two parts. First part is a theory phase where I will be educated in technology and background information. Second part is the practical phase. There I have to work for my cooparative company and have the oportunity to use and execute learned theretical stuff.

During time of GSoC I'm in such a practical phase, where I have to work. But nevertheless there will be time to do my job for this project.

For me the whole open source community is very impressive. It's amazing to meet lots of skilled people and I could imagine working on further projects. Especilly working with Eclipse as a platform gives developers the chance to be creative in all directions. Schedule of Code and Deliverables

Milestones

First plans are done, but milestones have to be created in a more deeper way.

Open Source Development Experience

I have no experience in Open Source developing. My hope is to get more contact with.

Eclipse Development Experience

My experiences with Equinox are some heared talks and whitepapers. I time to get practical in touch with such bundles ;-)

Work/Internship Experience

Because of my cooparative education I'm working for a german research centre (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe) during pratical phases. There I gain experiences in programming and projektmanagement.

Academic Experience

I am studying applied computer science on University of Cooparative Education Karlsruhe. With beginning of this education I was getting first contact to java and Eclipse as an IDE. On practical phases I'm writing application in .net. Preffered language there is C# which equals java mostly in things like syntax.

Why Eclipse ?

As I mentioned before I heard of Eclipse by learning programming with java. At first Eclipse was a nice developement environment with very nice features like strg+1. By hearing some talks of colleague of mine, Benjamin Muskalla, I get an overview of the technology of Eclipse and OSGI. After that point, I know that Eclipse is not a Java IDE.

For me the real amazing fact of Eclipse is that there are no bounds of creative programming. Almost everthing is possible to wrap in a plugin or bundle and execute and use it in Eclipse. So as a developer Eclipse could be the only application you have to start on your computer. That' really fancy :)

What do you hope to gain from your participation?

My personal aim of this participation are more skills in mostly every parts. I'm quite sure to improve my way of programming. To work in real projects and the contact with my mentor are the best way to do so. I'm very motivated learning new technologies and I think OSGi is a technology which concepts will be base for further products. For me it's a base for programming.

A next personal aim will be the contact with this whole community. To get a feeling for working in groups and teams whole over the world. One benefit I already get with setup this proposal.