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Setting up your environment

In this first lesson, you set up your environment to create a BIRT report from a physical data model.
Ensure that you have the following software and sample database installed:

In this tutorial, you use the Data perspective and the Report perspective. The tutorial uses the perspectives with their default view configurations.

By default, InfoSphere Data Architect starts in the Data perspective. The Data perspective consists of several default views, including:

If you are new to the Eclipse workbench, see the workbench tutorial. The tutorial contains detailed information about how to set up and use Eclipse views and perspectives.

Before you can create reports from the database, you must set up your environment by creating a data design project and a data model.

To set up your environment:

  1. Start InfoSphere Data Architect. The Data perspective opens with the default views. If you did not previously create any data projects, the Data Project Explorer is blank. If you have a connection the DB2 SAMPLE database or any other database aliases, you see an offline connection in the Data Source Explorer.
    If Welcome page opens, close the Welcome page and open the Data perspective:
    1. From the main menu, click Window > Open Perspective > Other.
    2. In the window that opens, select Data and click OK. If you do not see Data in the list, click Show all.
  2. Close the Task Launcher view.
  3. If the GSDB database is not displayed in the Data Source Explorer, create a connection to the GSDB database:
    1. In the Data Source Explorer, right-click the Database Connections folder and click New.
    2. Complete the wizard to create a connection to your instance of the GSDB database.
      In Connection Parameters, select the following options to create a connection to the DB2 database:
      • In the Select a database manager field, select DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows.
      • In the JDBC driver field, select IBM Data Server Driver for JDBC and SQLJ (JDBC 4.0) Default.
  4. Create a data design project:
    1. From the main menu, click File > New > Data Design Project. The New Data Design Project wizard opens.
    2. Specify IDA-Report as the project name in the Project name field.
  5. Create a physical data model from the GSDB database:
    1. From the main menu, click File > New > Physical Data Model.
    2. Complete the wizard as shown in the following table:
      Page Steps to take
      Model File
      1. Specify the IDA-Report folder as the destination folder.
      2. Specify GSDB as the file name.
      3. Select DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows from the list of database options.
      4. Select 9.7 (or the DB2 version of your GSDB database) from the list of version options.
      5. Select the Create from reverse engineering option.
      6. Click Next.
      Source Select the Database option, then click Next.
      Select Connection Select the GSDB database, then click Next.
      Select Objects Select the GOSALES schema, then click Next.
      Database Elements No changes are necessary. Click Next.
      Options No changes are necessary. Click Finish.
    You have created a physical data model from a GSDB database.
Now that you are connected to the database and you created a data model, you will use the Report Design perspective to create and work with a report template.
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