What is BIRT?
Not BIRT is not the name of an impact crater on the near side of the Moon, at least it is not our subject today. BIRT is the nickname of the project Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools worn by the Eclipse Foundation. This is, as its name suggests, a platform for business intelligence and reporting based on Eclipse that provides a base reporting very web oriented. BIRT was born in September 2004 and the latest stable version 2.5.1, available since September. It is often seen as a "Yet Another Java Reporting Tool", but beyond its design tool and runtime reports, BIRT is primarily a real JEE reporting framework based on a modular architecture and powerful API that integrate and extend its functionality to perfection. BIRT is certainly young, but has learned from his elders (JasperReport, Pentaho ... etc..).
I had the opportunity to play with BIRT in JEE projects, designing and deploying reports to integrating BIRT functionality in applications JEE. I propose in this series of articles to discover the power of this platform by presenting the different components BIRT and the life cycle of a report (Part 1), the different ways to create a report (Part 2), choice of integration and deployment (Part 3) and finally the possibility of extending BIRT (Part 4).
- Part 1: BIRT, a platform and a framework of real reporting.
- Part 2: Anyone can create a BIRT report.
- Part 3: Integration and Deployment: BIRT bends to your wishes.
- Part 4: Extension: Everything can be extended in BIRT.
. . . → Read More: For a BIRT with you .. (Feedback on BIRT)