The BIRT Eclipse-based open source reporting system for web applications, especially those based on Java and J2EE, is now available in version 1.0.1. BIRT has two main components: a report designer based on Eclipse, and a runtime component that you can add to your app server. BIRT also offers a charting engine that lets you add charts to your own application.

The current released version is 1.0.1. Eclipse.org encourage developers to download BIRT, try it, and provide feedback though the newsgroups and Bugzilla.

BIRT allows developers to allow a rich variety of reports to applicatons:

Lists – The simplest reports are lists of data. As the lists get longer, you can add grouping to organize related data together (orders grouped by customer, products grouped by supplier). If your data is numeric, you can easily add totals, averages and other summaries.

Charts – Numeric data is much easier to understand when presented as a chart. BIRT provides pie charts, line & bar charts and many more.

Crosstabs –Crosstabs (also called a cross-tabulation or matrix) shows data in two dimensions: sales per quarter or hits per web page. (Crosstabs are not yet in Release 1.0.1, but are planned for a future release.)

Letters & Documents – Notices, form letters, and other textual documents are easy to create with BIRT. Documents can include text, formatting, lists, charts and more.

Compound Reports – Many reports need to combine the above into a single document. For example, a customer statement may list the information for the customer, provide text about current promotions, and provide side-by-side lists of payments and charges. A financial report may include disclaimers, charts, tables all with extensive formatting that matches corporate color schemes.