Inside this application the Design Engine API, the
Report Object Model, the BIRT Report Engine, the BIRT Chart Engine, and a number
of other BIRT technologies are utilized to deliver a robust and capable report
design environment.
Another product built with BIRT is the Web Viewer that comes with the Report
Engine runtime. This is a product that is plugged into a J2EE application container,
such as Apache Tomcat or BEA Weblogic, which utilizes the BIRT Report Engine to
run reports and output to HTML and PDF. Several other applications are built with
BIRT as well. Actuate BIRT Report Designer and Actuate 9 platforms are centered on
BIRT technology.
By looking at the above examples, we can see that the core BIRT technologies can be
leveraged to build a number of business intelligence products. Hopefully, this gives
you an idea of what exactly BIRT is. For shorthand, we will refer to the BIRT Report
Designer as BIRT throughout this book.
The Origins of BIRT
While the story I gave earlier in this chapter is great for telling my introduction to
BIRT, and demonstrates the need for open-source reporting platforms, it is not the
official origin of BIRT. For that, we need to turn to Actuate, and give a story that
eventually intersects with my story.
Actuate has been a big player in the reporting arena for many years.
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