Chapter 1
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The way Eclipse works is: there is a series of core classes that are included with
each Eclipse or RCP application. These classes contain all the necessary classes
for building and managing the application and building the application interface.
The core application is then extended using plug-ins. Things such as the Content
Versioning System browser (CVS), Java IDE, C++ IDE, and various tools in the
Web Tools Projects are all plug-ins to Eclipse. This is how the BIRT Report Designer
works. The Designer API extends the core Eclipse functionality by providing the
BIRT perspective with the report palette, the Report Designer, and ways to execute
the BIRT Viewer for report previewing.
From the BIRT perspective, this provides some really interesting deployment
strategies. For shops that are purely focused on report development, a BIRT RCP
application can be deployed to the desktops for developers to work with, without
being burdened down with any of the other Eclipse features. This is beneficial where
simplicity is the key and developers might be confused with Eclipse concepts,
such as having to change perspectives to have availability of the full features of an
Eclipse plug-in.
For the more robust development house, the plug-in approach would be more ideal.
This is beneficial for??”let's say??”building a larger enterprise web application utilizing
the EclipseWeb Tools Project (WTP) for J2EE, and being able to switch over to and
utilize BIRT to handle data reporting tasks for this application.
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