BIRT from Eclipse

BIRT is one of the most widely adopted Business Intelligence and reporting technologies with over 6.5 million downloads, 5 million in the past two years alone. It also has a large, active and growing developer community representing all types of organizations. It is licensed under the Eclipse Public License (EPL).

Eclipse BIRT has all you need to meet the data visualization and reporting requirements for the majority of application development and reporting projects.

The Eclipse BIRT Designers

Eclipse BIRT offers three BIRT Report Designers for three different target users.

  • Eclipse BIRT Report Designer All-in-One - This designer is for Eclipse, Java, PHP and report developers who want to download BIRT with the complete Eclipse IDE in order to leverage JavaScript, Java and Eclipse-like IDE capabilities to control web page layout, data access, data transformation and report rendering. This gives the developer access to source code control, project management, and the developer tools.
  • Eclipse BIRT Report Designer Framework - This designer comes as a plug-in to an already-installed Eclipse IDE.  It offers the same functionality as the All-in-One. 
  • Eclipse BIRT RCP Designer - This designer works outside the Eclipse IDE. It is for report developers who want a stand-alone report designer. It supports JavaScript to add custom report functionality, behavior and business logic.

Eclipse BIRT Engine and Java API

Eclipse BIRT Engine is a collection of Java classes and API's used to execute BIRT reports and generate them in a variety of formats.  It reads a design created by the Designers, gathers and processes data and creates a parameterized document that incorporates charts and graphs. Formats generated include HTML, Adobe PDF, Word DOC, Excel XLS, PostScript, and PowerPoint PPT. It can be implemented as a component in a web application server or embedded in an application. 

Eclipse Sample BIRT Viewer

A sample viewer that comes with the Eclipse BIRT Engine and Java API’s is a sample implementation of the BIRT Engine in a web application.  It can retrieve HTML report content, display that content page-by-page in a web-based viewer and generate a table-of-contents for a more manageable user experience. It will also generate a PDF version, print, and export to CSV. 

Want to learn more?

To get more information about open source, please contact an Actuate expert at 1-800-884-8665 (US & Canada) or contact us by email or visit our BIRT community site BIRT-Exchange.com.