Business Intelligence and Reporting with BIRT

Java Feature — Business Intelligence and Reporting with BIRT @ JAVA DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL: "Open Source Business Intelligence software is finally coming into its own, with three major players coming to the fore: JasperReports, Pentaho, and BIRT (Business Intelligence and reporting tools). Business Intelligence technology comprises solutions for delivering enterprise data in the form of customizable reports, facilitating such practices as data mining and decision support systems. Of the three leading projects, both JasperReports and BIRT are commercial Open Source; they are backed by JasperSoft and BI veteran Actuate respectively. Pentaho uses the more traditional collaborative Open Source model. One of BIRT's distinguishing features is that it's an official Eclipse project, giving it a strong endorsement by one of the leading forces in the Java community. Our team chose BIRT after some due diligence on the other two because of our prior experience with Actuate and deep appreciation of all things Eclipse.

This article presents a 'first experience' approach to BIRT."