BIRT Business Partner, Innovent Solutions, Delivers BIRT Extensions on BIRT Exchange Marketplace

Libraries of BIRT Extensions on BIRT Exchange Marketplace Give Developers Added Capabilities to Enhance Productivity

London, UK – February 17th , 2010 – Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTU), the people behind BIRT™, today announced the availability of free libraries of BIRT Extensions that were jointly created by Innovent Solutions, a leader in delivering Information Management solutions for corporate and ISV clients and a BIRT Business Partner and Blackboard Inc., a leader in education technology and innovative solutions for learning institutions.  The BIRT Controls Library and the BIRT Functions Library have both been added to the BIRT Exchange Marketplace, an open software showcase on the most active online BIRT community, where any developer and company that has embraced BIRT can promote, share or sell BIRT-related applications, solutions and components. 

Each library is a best practice example of extending BIRT.  The BIRT Controls Library offers developers added control over BIRT generated content using standard drag-and-drop techniques.  These controls include DotBar and RotatedText controls that provide developers additional visualisations for displaying information within the BIRT-based reports.    

The BIRT Functions Library aids developers by extending the BIRT expression builder and scripting language.  Included are Aggregate and Script Function extension points. 

• The Aggregate extension allows developers to create new aggregate functions for summarising data. 
• The Script Function extension allows developers to create new JavaScript functions which can be called from within the report design.

“What makes these new extensions on the BIRT Marketplace remarkable is how three organisations can collaborate closely to create value for the entire BIRT community,” said Scott Rosenbaum, vice president at Innovent Solutions.  “Innovent provided the technical know-how, Blackboard contributed their code to the community, and BIRT Exchange has provided a forum where the contributions can be shared and promoted.”

Blackboard recently collaborated with Innovent to improve and expand reporting options for its Blackboard Learn™ customers using the BIRT technology. These reporting capabilities allow users of the Blackboard Learn Outcomes module to align and track academic programs to specific standards and program improvement projects. Blackboard has also updated a number of reports for users of older versions of the software to enable a richer reporting experience with BIRT and worked to allow developers of extensions for Blackboard Learn to use the BIRT reporting engine now bundled with Blackboard Learn.

“We are committed to providing more open access to the data inside Blackboard Learn, and including a rich platform for reports to be deployed within the Blackboard Learn software.” said Ray Henderson, President of Blackboard Learn. "We are looking to leverage community solutions like BIRT and partners like Innovent to expand these capabilities. We hope that others within the BIRT community will receive meaningful value from our contribution back to the overall BIRT community."

“The BIRT Controls Library and BIRT Functions Library are shining examples of how the BIRT community continues to evolve with increased adoption and changes in user demands,” said Nobby Akiha, senior vice president, marketing at Actuate.  “The availability of these Libraries of BIRT extensions on the BIRT Exchange Marketplace demonstrates our ongoing commitment to provide an avenue for our partners and community to distribute and market their BIRT wares, as well as foster collaboration and innovation to meet the current and future demands for Rich Information Applications.”

To Find Out More

For more information and to download the free BIRT Extensions from Innovent Solutions please visit the following:
BIRT Controls Library - http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/marketplace/app-showcase/?app=22  
BIRT Functions Library - http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/marketplace/app-showcase/?app=24  

To find out more about how you can grow your business with BIRT visit: www.birt-exchange.com/partnerprograms.

About Innovent Solutions

Innovent Solutions is a consulting firm dedicated to the improvement of decision making through effective information management. We build systems that enable our clients to find the information they want and need, Understand the context and meaning of information, and Trust the information to be accurate and timely.  Our focus on customer goals and objectives combined with deep technical depth and experience, allow us to build successful, high visibility solutions that deliver immediate value to our clients. Our business solutions are delivered through three integrated consulting practices: Information Access (Search), Business Intelligence and Data Management. Innovent Solutions is a privately held company headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in Minneapolis.

Actuate - the people behind BIRT

Actuate founded and continues to co-lead the Eclipse BIRT open source project. BIRT is the premier development environment for Rich Information Applications that present structured data and content in compelling and interactive ways via the web on any device. Actuate and its people are dedicated to making BIRT the best environment for our customers to develop Web 2.0 applications that drive revenue through higher customer satisfaction/loyalty and improve operational performance. The people of Actuate continually participate in and provide resources for the vibrant open source community that has emerged around BIRT. Anybody can participate in the BIRT movement by visiting www.birt-exchange.com.

Actuate offers value-add BIRT products and services that speed the development process and bring additional functionality such as, interactivity, content transformation and enterprise scalability to BIRT-based Rich Information Applications. Actuate has over 4,500 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services and the public sector. Founded in 1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol ACTU. For more information, visit the company's web site at www.actuate.com.

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