The Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) Project is an open source software project that provides reporting and business intelligence capabilities for rich client and web applications, especially those based on Java and Java EE. BIRT is a top-level software project within the Eclipse Foundation, an independent not-for-profit consortium of software industry vendors and an open source community.
The project's stated goals are to address a wide range of reporting needs within a typical application, ranging from operational or enterprise reporting to multi-dimensional online analytical processing (OLAP). Initially, the project has focused on and delivered capabilities that allow application developers to easily design and integrate reports into applications.
The project is supported by an active community of users at BIRT Developer Center and developers at the Eclipse.org BIRT Project page.
BIRT has two main components: a visual report designer within the Eclipse IDE for creating BIRT Reports, and a runtime component for generating reports that can be deployed to any Java environment. The BIRT project also includes a charting engine that is both fully integrated into the report designer and can be used standalone to integrate charts into an application.
BIRT Report designs are persisted as XML and can access a number of different data sources including JDO datastores, JFire Scripting Objects, POJOs, SQL databases, Web Services and XML.
History The BIRT project was first proposed and sponsored by Actuate Corporation when Actuate joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer on August 24, 2004. The project was subsequently approved and became a top-level project within the Eclipse community on October 6, 2004. The project contributor community includes IBM, and Innovent Solutions.
In 2007 IBM's Tivoli Division adopted BIRT as the infrastructure for its Tivoli Common Reporting (TCR) product. TCR produces historical reports on Tivoli-managed IT resources and processes.
The initial project code base was designed and developed by Actuate beginning in early 2004 and donated to the Eclipse Foundation when the project was approved.
Versions + Eclipse BIRT Project Released VersionsVersionRelease Date Description1.0 Preview March 1, 2005Preview at EclipseCon 2005: Eclipse Report Designer, Report Engine, Chart Engine1.0June 6, 2005Initial BIRT Report Designer, BIRT Report Engine, BIRT Chart Engine1.0.1July, 2005Support for Eclipse 3.1; RCP version of BIRT Report DesignerBIRT 1.0.1 New and Notable2.0January 23, 2006Major releaseBIRT 2.0 New and Notable2.0.1February 22, 2006Maintenance release2.1June 28, 2006Major release as part of Eclipse Callisto Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 2.1 New and Notable2.0.2August 4, 2006Maintenance release2.1.1September 26, 2006Maintenance release2.1.2February 27, 2007Maintenance release2.1.3July 5, 2007Maintenance release2.2June 28, 2007Major release as part of Eclipse Europa Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 2.2 New and Notable2.2.1October 2, 2007Maintenance release2.2.1.1November 1, 2007Maintenance release2.2.2February 27, 2008Maintenance release2.3June 25, 2008Major release as part of Eclipse Ganymede Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 2.3 New and Notable2.3.1 September 24, 2008"SR 1" Fall Maintenance release2.3.2February 25, 2009"SR 2" Winter Maintenance release2.5June 24, 2009Major release as part of Eclipse Galileo Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 2.5 New and Notable2.5.1September 25, 2009"SR 1" Fall Maintenance release2.5.2February 28, 2010"SR 2" Winter Maintenance release2.6June 24, 2010Major release as part of Eclipse Helios Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 2.6 New and Notable2.6.1September 17, 2010"SR 1" Fall Maintenance release2.6.2February 25, 2011"SR 2" Spring Maintenance release3.7June 22, 2011Major release as part of Eclipse Indigo Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 3.7 New and Notable3.7.1September 23, 2011"SR 1" Fall Maintenance release3.7.2February 24, 2012"SR 2" Maintenance release4.2.0June 27, 2012 Major release as part of Eclipse Juno Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 4.2 New and Notable4.2.1September 28, 2012 Maintenance release4.2.2February 22, 2013 Maintenance release4.3June 26, 2013 Major release as part of Eclipse Kepler Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 4.3 New and Notable4.3.1September 27, 2013 Maintenance release4.3.2February 28, 2014 Maintenance release4.4.0June 25, 2014Major release as part of Eclipse Luna Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 4.4 Release information4.4.1September 26, 2014Maintenance release4.4.2February 27, 2015Maintenance release4.5.0June 24, 2015Major release as part of Eclipse Mars Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 4.5 Release information4.6.0June 22, 2016Major release as part of Eclipse Neon Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 4.6 Release information4.7.0June 28, 2017Major release as part of Eclipse Oxygen Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 4.7 Release information4.8.0June 27, 2018Major release as part of Eclipse Photon Simultaneous ReleaseBIRT 4.8 Release information4.9.0June 16, 2021Minor release
References
Bibliography
External links Eclipse BIRT project home page