BIRT is an open source component which provides a development and execution environment for BIA content. It was selected for use following detailed analysis of the alternatives. Cúram V6Cúram V6 GA is the first release to incorporate BIRT technology, the list below is included to provide an overview of the key features.
- The BIRT Report Designer: The BIRT Report Designer is an Eclipse plug-in which allows a developer to write a BIRT report which can then be deployed into the BIRT Report Engine. This supports the use of a wide range of graphs (using the BIRT Charting Engine) as well as data listing. This is built on the BIRT Report Design Engine, which can be used by any Java application to create or modify report designs.
- The BIRT Charting Engine: The BIRT Charting Engine has a large number of built-in charts as well as support for user defined charts. The user defined charts are not constrained to any single technology, and so could be implemented in Adobe Flex, but all the built-in charts are implemented in Java.
- BIRT Report Engine: The BIRT Report Engine is the runtime component that renders a report design. It can produce output in a number of formats including HTML and PDF.