BIRT Project

Eclipse BIRT Project

Eclipse BIRT Report Designer
Developer(s) Eclipse Foundation
Stable release 3.7.1 / September 23, 2011; 4 months ago (2011-09-23)
Written in Java
Operating system Cross-platform
Available in Multilingual
Type Enterprise Reporting / Business Intelligence
License Eclipse Public License
Website http://www.eclipse.org/birt

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,[1] 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 Exchange 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 SQL databases, JDO datastores, JFire Scripting Objects, POJOs, XML and Web Services.

Contents

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.[2] The project was subsequently approved and became a top level project within the Eclipse community on October 6, 2004[3] The project contributor community includes Innovent Solutions, and IBM. 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 Versions
Version Release Date Description
1.0 Preview March 1, 2005 Preview at EclipseCon 2005: Eclipse Report Designer, Report Engine, Chart Engine
1.0 June 6, 2005 Initial BIRT Report Designer, BIRT Report Engine, BIRT Chart Engine
1.0.1 July, 2005 Support for Eclipse 3.1; RCP version of BIRT Report Designer[4]
2.0 January 23, 2006 Major release[5]
2.0.1 February 22, 2006 Maintenance release
2.1 June 28, 2006 Major release as part of Eclipse Callisto Simultaneous Release[6]
2.0.2 August 4, 2006 Maintenance release
2.1.1 September 26, 2006 Maintenance release
2.1.2 February 27, 2007 Maintenance release
2.1.3 July 5, 2007 Maintenance release
2.2 June 28, 2007 Major release as part of Eclipse Europa Simultaneous Release[7]
2.2.1 October 2, 2007 Maintenance release
2.2.1.1 November 1, 2007 Maintenance release
2.2.2 February 27, 2008 Maintenance release
2.3 June 25, 2008 Major release as part of Eclipse Ganymede Simultaneous Release[8]
2.3.1 September 24, 2008 "SR 1" Fall Maintenance release
2.3.2 February 25, 2009 "SR 2" Winter Maintenance release
2.5 June 24, 2009 Major release as part of Eclipse Galileo Simultaneous Release[9]
2.5.1 September 25, 2009 "SR 1" Fall Maintenance release
2.5.2 February 28, 2010 "SR 2" Winter Maintenance release
2.6 June 24, 2010 Major release as part of Eclipse Helios Simultaneous Release[10]
2.6.1 September 17, 2010 "SR 1" Fall Maintenance release
2.6.2 February 25, 2011 "SR 2" Spring Maintenance release
3.7 June 22, 2011 Major release as part of Eclipse Indigo Simultaneous Release[11]
3.7.1 September 23, 2011 "SR 1" Fall Maintenance release
3.7.2 Planned February, 2012 "SR 2" Maintenance release

References

  1. ^ "BIRT Project Description and Scope". http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/project/description.php. Retrieved 2007-05-27. 
  2. ^ "Actuate Joins Eclipse Foundation as Strategic Developer and Board Member". Press Release. Eclipse Foundation. 2004-08-24. http://www.eclipse.org/org/press-release/aug242004actuatepr.html. Retrieved 2007-05-27. 
  3. ^ "Eclipse Foundation and Actuate Announce Approval of Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools Project". Press Release. Eclipse Foundation. 2004-10-06. http://www.eclipse.org/org/press-release/oct62004birtpr.html. Retrieved 2007-05-27. 
  4. ^ BIRT 1.0.1 New and Notable
  5. ^ BIRT 2.0 New and Notable
  6. ^ BIRT 2.1 New and Notable
  7. ^ BIRT 2.2 New and Notable
  8. ^ BIRT 2.3 New and Notable
  9. ^ BIRT 2.5 New and Notable
  10. ^ BIRT 2.6 New and Notable
  11. ^ BIRT 3.7 New and Notable

Bibliography

External links