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

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.