I am trying to report on Limesurvey data using BIRT (The Open Source BI Tool).

Has anyone successfully achieved this?

I can connect to the Limesurvey database, and read the survey data, but the column headings make it rather difficult to write generic reports.

Has anyone got any SQL (or other techniques) that presents the survey data using the question codes as column headers (much as the Excel export feature does in through GUI)?

Many thanks
John

I think a simple PHP script could do that. In what format does BIRT need the results to read them?

The most convenient would be a database table (or view or stored procedure) that returns a table with the question codes as column headings. Ideally multiple surveys would be presented in the same table with the survey ID as field in the row. (But I can work around that)

Have a look at the file common_functions.php and common.php and also check for the function createfieldmap() for a first start.

Thank you. Dont suppose anyone has had a go at doing this in SQL?

Probably not. I don't remember BIRT being discussed here a lot.

Would it suit you if such a script just copies the table and then replaces the column names?

That would be one solution.

Perhaps the most flexible would be a table that provides a mapping from lime_questions to lime_survey_xxxxx column headings. From there it would relatively easy to generate SQL to make any query that might be required.

I am not a PHP programmer. Would anyone be able to advise how to generate such a table?

Thanks

I think withut some PHP programming skills this is very hard to set up and customize according to your needs. Also, creating customized PHP scripts is way beyond the free support we offer here (we do all this in our free time) because it takes a lot of time and has to be customized according to your setup, Limesurvey version and DB system.

If you are interested in advanced, paid support you can drop me a note at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Hello,

If BIRT have an 'importing' option, maybe it's possible to adapt some PSPP/SPSS existing script to BIRT.

(but need PHP devs like Mazi already say, but this script can be included in a future release of LS)

Denis

In the end I hacked the exportresults.php script to generate the SQL nessecary to create a database view of the lime_survey_xxxx table with the question titles for the column names. I can now JDBC into the database a run the reports I need.

Thank you for your help.