BIRT, which stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, is actually a development framework. Including the word "Tools" in the acronym is appropriate, since BIRT is in fact a collection of development tools and technologies used for report development utilizing the BIRT framework. BIRT is essentially not a product, but a series of core technologies on top of which products and solutions are built, similar in fashion to the Eclipse framework. The focus of this book is on the most visible and familiar product built with the BIRT framework, which is the BIRT Report Designer. The BIRT Report Designer is an Eclipse plug-in that utilizes BIRT technologies to allow users to design reports in the BIRT document format. You can integrate it with your Java/J2EE applications to produce compelling reports.
This book is a concise and practical guide aimed at getting the results you want as quickly as possible. It steers the reader through each point of reporting from setup, to scripting, designing, formatting, and deploying BIRT reports using a common example that runs through the book. Who this book is for: This book is for Java developers who want to create rich reports and get started with BIRT to do this. Readers will need a basic understanding of SQL to follow along.
