BIRT distributions

As it stands right now, the BIRT report designer comes in two flavors. The distribution I will be discussing in this book is the Eclipse BIRT designer, available at http://www.eclipse.org/birt. The Eclipse version of BIRT, which is an open source release under the Eclipse public license, is the fly by the seat of your pants version of BIRT, with all the latest bells and whistles, actively supported by the BIRT community—this is where all the action is if you are interested in the development of an application. If you are a computer tweaker or you like the latest and greatest features, a stable distribution is always available. This is the most popular version of BIRT.

The second version of BIRT is the Actuate BIRT designer. Actuate BIRT is a corporate branded version of BIRT, released by Actuate—the parent company behind the BIRT project, Actuate. This version contains all the same features of the Eclipse BIRT, plus some features that are specific to the Actuate platform such as integration into Actuate Iserver. Actuate's next generation of business intelligence solutions, Actuate 9 and 10, is build on top of BIRT technology, with Actuate's BIRT Report Designer, Business Reports Tools, and Iportal products all being heavily coupled with BIRT.

For the shirts out there who won't consider a product unless there is a professional support unit to call in the middle of the night and scream bloody murder when things don't work, this is the option that you are looking for as the Actuate BIRT is fully supported by Actuate. Actuate BIRT is always based on the latest stable version of BIRT, with additional service fixes. It is also a standalone RCP product. While the Eclipse version is integrated into Eclipse and you can actively use other Eclipse products, the Actuate version is BIRT only.