BIRT data capabilities

As BIRT is a Java-centric reporting environment built on top of Eclipse, many different data tools provide BIRT with its data capabilities. Building on the Eclipse ODA data platform, BIRT can provide data from a wide array of different sources. JDBC can be used to provide connections to many of the popular Relational Database Management Systems out in the market such as Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL. Using plain old Java objects, web services, and persistent data objects are just some of the sources that BIRT can connect to.

In addition to the classic client-or server-based reporting capabilities afforded to BIRT through this mechanism, BIRT also offers some extensible data handling capabilities through a number of different mechanisms. The Eclipse Data Tools Project is being leveraged by BIRT for its XML Data Source handling. The Eclipse Open Data Access Framework (a.k.a. ODA framework) allows developers to build custom drivers for data connections...