When I teach people about development topics of any sort, I like to use scenarios. This book will be no different. The scenarios provide a basic context for the learner to relate the topic information to, and hopefully help in facilitating information retention.

So, in this chapter we will look at a simple scenario in order to get us started with our first report. Assume you work for a toy company called Classic Cars. Classic Cars specializes in selling models of classic cars and motorcycles. Classic Cars uses a centralized database for all company operations, such as employee listing, offices, customers, products, and sales history. This information is in a relational database that is stored locally on your machine, as Classic Cars is a small company.

In this chapter, I will walk you through creating your first report that will be a list of all products that a particular customer has bought in the past. I choose this for a number of reasons. First, it is a fairly simple database query to build and understand. If you are not familiar with the SQL language, don't worry; I will provide you with the queries. However, I do highly recommend that you get some basic familiarity with database concepts, and SQL in particular.

While going through this report, I will introduce you to the BIRT working environment and show you where to get access to the various portions of the BIRT Designer. Finally, I will show you where you can refer to another guided tutorial, accessible right within the BIRT environment. You might as well have access to all available resources for further learning.